mBank’s Bartosz Pawłowski, Chief Investment Officer, and Aleksandra Żukowska, Private Banking Head of Sales, discuss how they deal with ESG and help their clients to be more responsible.
What is your ESG ambition for wealth management?
We are fully committed towards responsible investments. Not only in line with core mBank values, but also as a key differentiator of our proposition on the market. Our ambition for wealth management by 2025 is to be ESG compliant for all of our investment strategies.
ESG investing used to be viewed as potentially detrimental to performance. What is the perception of your high net worth clients now? What's the appetite for ESG funds?
First of all this perception has changed over the last several years. Secondly, even at the time of surging oil and energy prices, ESG solutions are not laggards. We are consistently converting our offering towards ESG solutions, and HNWI are not concerned about that. On the contrary, many of the current global trends are reinforcing the shift among more sophisticated investors. Within discretionary asset management, ESG strategies have been the fastest growing segment for us and we expect that to continue. For third party funds the story is similar, although the pace of transition will largely depend on our partners’ willingness to convert their strategies. That being said, we are being very vocal and transparent that over time we will not be recommending non-ESG funds.
