Pension funds’ need for ESG products gets hard to match

There are two streams of funds evolving in the market place according to Jan van den Hogen, head of tenant relationship management logistics, Deka Immobilien.

There are those that are prepared to take a bit less return in order to achieve greater sustainability, and those that do not care much about ESG and merely want a higher return.

But the latter view is much less popular and van den Hogen added that the moment clients see that you are seriously addressing ESG and trying to make a difference they say “let’s go for it”.

“They simply say we understand it and we still can manage to get the pensions paid that we need to pay every month to our contributors.”

In fact, Deka is now frequently in the position of having to turn away capital because of difficulty finding the right assets in which to invest it.

“There are a lot of investors simply convinced of the fact that ESG will be the next big thing for the next 10, 20, 30 years,” he said.

Click on the video to watch the full interview or listen to the podcast below.