Hello everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. My name is Esther Whieldon. I'm a senior writer on the ESG thought leadership team at S&P Global Sustainable One. It is my pleasure to moderate today's webinar titled "Beyond ESG: Understanding the S&P 500 ESG Index Ecosystem." Today's webinar is part of a series titled "Beyond ESG: Taking the Conversation Beyond the Traditional ESG Topics." Before I introduce today's guest, I have a few housekeeping items. Please recognize that the topic of today's webinar is of great interest to you. We want this to be an interactive session, and we encourage you to submit your questions for this session. At the bottom of your screen, you will see a row of widget icons. These icons will allow you to interact with us throughout the session.
I would like to point out the Q&A widget, which can be used to submit questions to panelists, as well as the survey widget. Please take the time to fill out our short survey after the webinar. We really value your insight. This webinar is being recorded, and an on-screen version will be available shortly after we conclude. If you encounter technical issues during the program, please try refreshing your browser, and if issues persist, please use the Q&A widget to contact us, and a member of our technical team will assist you. Now to the topic of today's webinar. As investor priorities for sustainability evolve globally, S&P Dow Jones Indices has a broad line of activities measuring the world's largest equity markets, including the S&P 500, through sustainability lines.
Today, we'll be exploring these indices, digging into the liquidity ecosystem, which includes funds and futures, and taking a look at recent trends in investor sentiment. Helping us explore these topics today are Paul Woolman, Managing Director, Global Head of Equity Index Products at CME Group, Olivier Souliac, Managing Director, Head of Indexing and Xtrackers Product Specialists at DWS Group, and Stephanie Rowton, Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices. So let's just start off with a question for all three of you. Can you briefly tell us what should our audience know about your organization and your role there as it relates to the topic of today's webinar? Stephanie, do you want to start us off?
Sure. So my name is Stephanie Rowton, and as Esther said, I'm a Product Manager at S&P Dow Jones Indices. S&P, or SPDJI, is a global leader in providing financial market data, analytics, and indices. We provide a wide range of indices that serve as benchmarks for investment performance across various asset classes. As a Product Manager, my role is to position, shape, and communicate our U.S. equity index offering, which includes things like monitoring performance, assessing positioning, and driving enhancements to ensure that our offerings align with market demand and regulatory requirements.
Do you want to do next?
Hi everyone, thank you, Stephanie. And my role here at Xtrackers is to work together with index providers to develop massive investment products and solutions in ETFs and the institutional clients here globally. Xtrackers is a passive asset management arm of DWS. We have a bit more than 300 billion of assets managed globally.
[inaudible]
Thanks for inviting me today. My name is Paul Woolman. I head up the equity products team at CME Group. That involves listing futures and options across various equity index benchmarks, including the S&P 500, Dow Jones, S&P 100, and a few. CME Group, more broadly, is an organization which actually is a world-leading derivatives marketplace, and we offer products across all the major asset classes.
Thank you, Stephanie. I think the first question I have is for you. Earlier this month, on February 10th, the S&P 500 ESG Index changed its name to the S&P 500 Scores and Screens Index. So I'm curious, what prompted this, and will it result in any changes to the methodology?
Yes. So the European Securities and Markets Authority, or ESMA, is the EU's financial markets regulator, and in 2024, they issued guidelines on the use of ESG or sustainability-related terms in fund names. These guidelines require European UCITS and alternative funds providers to offer clear and accurate information, ensuring consistency in ESG-related fund names. While these guidelines don't necessarily apply to our indices or to index providers, they do have a bit of an indirect impact on SPDJI, given the close relationship between European and U.S. fund sectors. To assist our clients in adhering to these guidelines, we updated the names of certain ESG indices used for funds in the EU. So, for example, the S&P 500 ESG Index is now called the S&P 500 Scores and Screens Index. I think you're right in that it's crucial to note that this is a change in name only.
The index methodology, the surrounding ecosystem, historical performance, and the data used for these indices all remain unchanged.
Thank you. So can you tell us a little bit about the methodology for the index and how it's performed recently?
Yeah. So if we look at the first slide, it's just an overview. It shows the S&P Scores and Screens Index and how the objective is to integrate sustainability criteria into the S&P 500 while capturing performance characteristics of the broader U.S. equity market. If we skip another slide and another one, let's take a look at the methodology, and the methodology is really simple. We take the S&P 500 as the underlying index. We then apply various exclusions to create the eligible universe. The remaining constituents are then ranked by S&P Global ESG Scores, and we select the top-ranked constituents, targeting 75% market cap in each S&P 500-based industry group. Finally, we weight the companies by stressed market cap. This methodology enables us to meet two core objectives. First, it aims to maintain similar overall industry group weights as the S&P 500.
If we look at the next slide, we can see the second breakdown. It's this alignment which has historically resulted in comparable risk-adjusted performance. Secondly, the second objective the index seeks is to reduce exposure to companies that do not manage their businesses in line with ESG principles. This is determined through the integration of S&P Global ESG Scores and Screens, S&P Global ESG scores, and other relevant data such as UNGC or controversy monitoring. Looking at the index metrics, you can see that the S&P Scores and Screens Index contains a broad number of constituents, just over 300 companies. This broad representation provides investors with diversification while still focusing on companies that adhere to ESG principles. I think it's really interesting to note that the energy sector is not excluded.
This is because of the first objective I mentioned, to maintain that similar overall industry group weight to the S&P 500. This allows the index to include companies that demonstrate strong ESG practices while allowing for a bit more of a nuanced approach to sustainability. If we look at the next slide, we can see our performance. We can see that the S&P 500 Scores and Screens Index has historically provided very similar performance to the S&P 500 and actually historically outperformed on one, 2, 5, and 10 years, while exhibiting similar levels of risk and a tracking error of around 1.2%. This highlights that while the index is focused on sustainability, it closely mirrors the broader market without sacrificing performance or diversification.
This desire to integrate certain sustainable values into broad core deep market benchmark exposure has seen a real area of growth and resulted in the evolution of our Scores and Screens Index family, so we now include other core U.S. equity indices such as the S&P 500 Equal Weight Scores and Screens Index, and for example, indices that include things like factors such as value and growth.
Thank you. So my next question is to Paul Woolman. Thank you both. Can you talk about the advantages of the kind of ecosystem that we just described, the ESG or sustainable products, as it relates to the S&P 500 Scores and Screens Index?
Yeah, sure. So obviously, it's important to have the index methodology out there and the indexing existence, but for investment purposes, people need to access that index via products or by replicating the index and buying all the stocks that are underlying it. And for many clients, buying an index-based product is an easy and accessible way to get exposure to this particular index. In terms of ourselves, we launched futures on the CME S&P 500 ESG Index as it was back in 2019, and that future has now been in existence a little over five years. After initially launching that product, it quickly established itself as the most liquid ESG or sustainable-based equity future on the globe. If you look at last year, in 2024, it traded at 1.1 thousand contracts per day. What does that mean in notes and terms?
It was trading at $260 million or more per day during 2024. It's important to try and put that in some kind of context, and what's important here on the screen, as you can see this slide, is actually that tracking error that Stephanie spoke to is important because we do have the E-mini S&P 500 futures listed at CME. They are the most liquid equity benchmark on the globe, and what's important here is this tracking error, because it's so close, allows liquidity in that parent ecosystem of parent S&P 500 index to be easily transferred into the ESG version or Scores and Screens version as it is now. That's important because clients can feel that they can source liquidity easily, whether that be on the order book of the futures or via block, and both methods are very popular in terms of how clients are accessing the product.
If we look at open interest, which is a measure of trying to gauge how many clients have active open positions in the futures, it averaged around 15,000 contracts during 2024, and in notional terms, that's approaching about $4 billion. Now, in terms of clients who we've seen accessing this product, it's been a broad variety of clients. So we see asset managers and insurers very active and holding a lot of the open interest, but we also see other participants be active in the product. Clients are often providing liquidity via blocks, and we've seen on-screen market makers providing liquidity on the order book.
The other thing is, as it got to a critical mass in terms of the future itself, we've seen more systematic accounts, so hedge funds and CTAs be active in this product too, as it met the thresholds where they started getting involved in the product. We've seen them be active over the last couple of years. The other thing I've mentioned is the geography of clients. We see clients active all over the globe in terms of in this product. Predominant interest in ESG or sustainability does come out from here, and so that is probably the highest weight of geography that we see in terms of client base, and we see clients active out of the U.S. and also out of APAC. Lastly, quite a lot of those delivery aids also discuss other things in the ecosystem such as ETFs.
I think what's important here is the way that clients can access the product. So I mentioned you can trade via on the order book or via blocks, but we also have a couple of other functionalities which allow clients to trade the futures, and not everyone might be aware of these. So one methodology is called BTIC, which stands for Basis Trade at Index Close, and what that allows clients to do is trade an agreed-to basis intraday, and then wherever the cash index closes tonight or later that day, basically that basis gets added to that official cash index close, and that's where a client can buy or sell a future at. Why is that important? It's because the cash index close is the most liquid part of the day, and a lot of clients want to target the close.
And if we think about the ecosystem, that's where a lot of liquidity interacts. If we think about ETFs now, they're often benchmarked to the close. And so if you're moving between ETFs and futures or other products into cash baskets, a lot of trading is done against that closing point, and so being able to trade a future against the official cash index close is very useful. So that functionality is called BTIC. Lastly, the last thing I want to mention is we also introduced another functionality called Derived Blocks, and what a Derived Block allows clients to do is very similar to BTIC. You agree a basis with a liquidity provider upfront, so then the liquidity provider can work a related hedge in a related market, such as the underlying cash stocks or even an ETF, to source liquidity from elsewhere in the ecosystem.
And once that hedge has been completed, the basis gets added to that hedge, and essentially it gets blocked. And we call this functionality a Derived Block. Now, this was only introduced at the end of last year, so we're already seeing clients start to use this functionality very actively. And this is another way that the sort of ecosystem around the Scores and Screens Index can be accessed and be more interactive between the underlying stock market, ETFs, and futures. I'll pass over to Olivier.
Yeah, thank you very much, Paul. And to me, I can only compliment what you said because clearly, for an index that is live to be actually investable and invested in, actually part of an ecosystem like that, it's something relatively rare. And so I think you have to go as well back to the success of ESG-related indices as a whole, as a way to provide ESG-related exposure to clients as really the foundation of the success of an ecosystem based on an ESG index. And of course, the predictability of index rules, the transparency of the application of index rules and the data used in there, maybe the fact that it's sometimes cold-hearted in its disappearance has been historically great success factors for ESG-related indices to actually gain investors' traction and eventually have a whole ecosystem around them.
It's actually a great thing for ETF investors to know that there is an ecosystem around the index because they just have a wider choice that's available to them for the same exposure. We see it with derivatives. You can actually complement a certain beta exposure with those instruments, which really makes the use case as well for the ETF pretty compelling. Beyond the success and the ecosystem, the success of the index also lies in the fact that it remains a strong benchmark for many ESG investors, especially in the U.S., but also for a lot of European investors who want to invest into ESG equities.
Thank you. So I think you just touched on this, but as a follow-up, I'm just how would you say the S&P 500 Scores and Screens Index aligns with the objectives of investors who may be looking for sustainable investment options?
I think it aligns very well. I mean, in terms of the slides and the way that Stephanie introduced the product, the idea behind this index is that ultimately it replicates S&P 500 in terms of trying to deliver S&P 500-like returns but achieve it in a more sustainable ESG-compliant manner. And if we look at the actual composition of the index, it has about 300 or so names in it as opposed to 500 like the parent S&P 500. And from that perspective, it is really doing a lot of filtering under the bonnet of the methodology behind the index. I think that's important because we've seen other indices out there which have ESG-type labels, but really don't do much compared to the parent index. Here, there's a really discernible methodology which is very robust in nature and is giving the client exposure in an ESG or sustainable manner.
The other thing I think that is important is that that tracking error is low. And finally, if we look at how it's performed, while it's not designed to outperform the parent S&P 500 index, over the last few years, we can see actually that the ESG version has actually outperformed the S&P 500 parent index. And so some of those objectives of trying to filter out the least ESG-compliant names does seem to be working and having a positive impact from a performance aspect. The final thing I'd say in this is we've seen clients use this in order to obtain their objectives in two ways. So one, clients who have an ESG mandate are using this future in lieu of the parent E-mini S&P 500 futures or other index products on the parent in order to be compliant to their ESG needs.
The second way that we see clients using the product is really from a top-down portfolio construction manner, whereby they're using futures to the ESG future to overlay their current portfolio and thus they give their portfolio an ESG lens and a look through from a top-down perspective. So there's really two ways that we see clients using this to meet their objectives: one more bottom-up fundamental and one top-down overlay approach.
Thank you, Paul. And I can only comment from here. I mean, I do agree with you, Paul, that this index is actually pretty conveniently positioned between those lower tracking error products with very little tracking error, but also very few ESG characteristics built into the products that these are called screens. It can be appealing to certain investors who are willing just to remove certain companies that are involved in activities that don't come to the controversial, such as tobacco or, of course, controversial weapons. But if you look at the other side of the spectrum, right, when you look at ESG investment, especially in Europe, you have way more orthodox products that are even quite successful as well, which would, of course, have a broader range of activities that are excluded as being potentially controversial, combined with additional selection criteria on ESG-related risk management.
Here, S&P to us has been really playing in the middle, trying to integrate from both the screened side of things with a number of activities that have been screened that have been also selected in consultation with European and American investor communities to ensure that it is representative of investors' preferences in terms of sustainability. And it is combined with a more ESG risk-related scoring approach, which for us is interesting because it enables for the index to avoid certain companies that are not necessarily able to manage their ESG-related risks properly. And we think it could be a substantial explanation for the performance in the past. And let's see what it brings to us.
But we think that there's also one thing that is pretty unique about the S&P 500 Scores and Screens is that it has really a dual use case where you have investors, especially in the U.S., where the mix is between investors looking at slightly enhanced risk return metrics versus a traditional index at the price of relatively moderate tracking error, as you were mentioning, Paul, and then the second use case is maybe something that we see more in Europe, especially also with certain American investors who may want to remain anonymous in the current environment, but whose agenda is more a sustainability-driven agenda, where certain sustainability preferences are fundamentally anchored in the investment process, and where the S&P 500 Scores and Screens does provide the exposure that corresponds to a majority of those investors with a sustainability agenda.
To us, it's a very unique situation where both I can see as an index provider, and we're happy about it, have been able to consult with the marketplace, including, of course, asset managers, but also asset owners, to really look regularly at investor preferences on sustainability agenda. But at the same time, they have been able to create an index that is actually becoming a benchmark for those investors, where we've seen certain investors willing to adapt to the sustainability metrics that are in the index in order to be able to invest into that index specifically because they consider it as one beacon or one reference, right, in terms of ESG metrics and agenda in the market and in the ESG space. Every beacon of light is more than welcome because the devil is in the detail.
Indeed. It seems like that is always the case with the devil being in the detail. Now, earlier, Stephanie mentioned the term equal weight, and I'm not as familiar as our three panelists with the term. Olivier, can you define what equal weight involves and tell us a little bit about that ecosystem? Then Paul, maybe you can answer as well.
Yeah. Equal weight is really a very large, very big topic. It's very important for investors. It's a large trend that has started 10 years ago for U.S. investors, for European investors looking to invest in the U.S., probably even 20 years ago for American investors, and it's a key solution for many investors in Europe, especially to address concentration concerns, especially as European investors have been gradually increasing their exposure to U.S. equities. So what is equal weight? Equal weight consists in just weighting stocks in the S&P 500 Index. In this example, in an equal fashion, so typically for 500 stocks, you would have a weight of 20 basis points, 0.2%, upon a rebalancing base. This index rebalances on a quarterly basis. As the stock index outperforms the index, for example, their weight would actually go up in that index.
So they are naturally brought down to 0.2% upon the next rebalancing. And for that, of course, that excess weight is sold. So we like to say it's a kind of buy low, where you purchase those stocks that underperform the index, sell high, where you sell those stocks that have actually outperformed the index. So here, it's really interesting that being the first provider in Europe that capitalized on this Americanization trend of European portfolios that advanced this exposure 10 years ago, we were actually the largest provider of this exposure in Europe. But here, it's actually awesome for a lot of our investors. For many, it's really a simple solution to a complex problem whether sensibly or due to the Americanization of investors' portfolios, it's already there in Asia. It's coming in Europe as well.
Due to that Americanization, investors have onboarded increasing Magnificent Seven, increasing concentration exposure onto their global equity portfolio, and one way of solving this pretty complex problem was just to apply this exposure increment into the U.S. equities, into an equal weight index, such that you do not have this not necessarily well asked for and well desired concentration on the mega cap side.
I'll add to that. I think we've seen a real interest in equal weight as a theme. As Olivier said, equal weight's not particularly new in terms of the notion, in terms of the index being restructured to be equal weight. However, in the last 12 to 18 months, I think equal weight's become much more into focus, and the reason for that really has been the U.S. Mag Seven outperformance of the rest of the index. The top names within the S&P 500 have considerably outperformed. But what that meant is in a market cap-weighted index, such as the parent S&P 500 index here, the concentration has become more extreme. So if we take the top seven holdings now, they've gone to over 30% of the S&P 500, and now, not everybody wants to have as quite as concentrated exposure as that through the S&P 500 index.
And so an equal weighted version, where you're still getting exposure to the top 500 names, but in a more equal weighted fashion, is, as Olivier said, quite an elegant way to get that exposure in a more equal diversified way. And now, that's for each investor to decide which way's best for them. And that obviously also depends on their objectives within their portfolio. But certainly, S&P 500 Equal Weight has become much more popular with investors. We launched the futures about a year ago on this particular index, and it's seen great success straight out the gate. So we've seen open interest climb to about 17,000 contracts now. That's roughly $2.5 billion. We've seen trades practically through the order book and via block every single day through March.
Procter [inadible] Index, and the next obvious question probably tends to be, what's the Scores and Screens or sustainable way to get access to this? I'll leave that to you.
Well, yeah. Do you have an answer to that?
There is the Scores and Screens Index. I think Stephanie mentioned that at the top of the presentation. And we don't offer a product at this point in time, but I know that Olivier does. So he's probably interested to find what's out there right now.
I will try to convince you. Absolutely. Indeed. There's this unique scenario that I think there's a piece of data, Stephanie, where this rule set of the ESG-related rules on the S&P 500 Scores and Screens has been really elaborated in constant dialogue with clients and index users, and of course, the index could adapt to market expectations. And we found that so interesting and powerful that we said, well, it's really especially our European investors are interested in ramping up the U.S. exposure. They are, of course, bound to having a certain sustainability agenda. They already know the rule set of the S&P 500 Scores and Screens. Why not do an equal weight version of that? So this is what we did with S&P a few years ago.
And now, of course, we're the proud owner of the larger equal weight ESG, like Scores and Screens, screened ETFs in Europe. But it was really a logical step for us, right, to develop that version. And I think it's really interesting that we have now more than 5.5 billion investors, almost 10 billion investors across the street in Europe, throughout all of these different ESG shades of the S&P 500 equal weight, where we think that it's really a very useful tool for investors who have an ESG agenda in order to exercise this call through increased diversification in their U.S. exposure. So where we see the trend is that the ESG adoption in Europe is usually contractual. So it cannot be unwound so easily.
And we see this where investors who are onboarding on an investment journey towards certain sustainability criteria are not willing to take a step back. So we do not see investors really going in arrears. And therefore, for that investor community, which estimated to grow to around a fourth, a quarter of all the ETF assets in Europe, it is very good to have an ecosystem around a kind of ESG integrated version of their equal weight exposure as the equal weight indices and this S&P 500 Equal Weight gains in success overall. So to us, it was a logical step. Going forward, the assets in the S&P 500 Scores and Screens Equal Weight will grow as the expectations of the ESG characteristics continue to take on, especially in Europe, also in Asia, but also as investors also continue to increase their U.S.
Exposure and have certain concerns for some of them around the Magnificent Seven and around diversification in both their U.S. dollar non-ESG sleeve and their U.S. equities ESG sleeve. So I think that that's important to have that tool in our toolbox.
So you mentioned that investors are not going back. They're wanting more, more, more, right, in these areas. What is driving that? Both for you and Paul?
So, the more and more, I'd say that investors can do less and less. It's very difficult for investors to take a step back and really go reverse on their sustainability investment agenda. The speed of the ESG integration journey has definitely slowed down in the last three years now, two years and a half. I believe that for us as a product provider, I said this in 2021. ESG in terms of us providing ESG-related exposures has been reached in 2023, which means that we are still launching ESG-related products, but not necessarily at the fast pace as we have been in the past.
What I can tell you is that for existing products in ESG, we have not been in a position to scale back certain of the sustainability-related companies named in a product because it is for investors very difficult to convince themselves, their stakeholders, that certain decisions on the sustainability agenda may not be adapted to the current environment. ESG is the list of cold-hearted exercises I was discussing earlier on, and this is potentially a reason why the only way is forward.
Y eah. I agree in that. I don't think the theme of sustainability or ESG is going away. I think that the objectives it's trying to achieve in terms of what investors want and what clients ultimately want to be provided by their investment vehicles is going to have a sustainable tilt to it, and thus, we need a variety of things in the toolkit that Olivier spoke to.
So for us, to me, we have quite a high threshold to launch a futures product. There needs to be a suitable ecosystem and AUM tracking in a given index or demand for a given index in order for us to do that. But I think in terms of the journey here, we're seeing that demand in the regular equal weight S&P 500 Equal Weight Index and ecosystem. And as that evolves, I think it's a natural step that later down the line with enough validation, there can be demand for a Scores and Screens version. And the other thing that I'd add is across these indices in general, it has not been a static feature. What we've seen is that even in terms of the main S&P 500 Scores and Screens Index that we started with at the top of this webinar, we've seen it evolve.
S&P has listened to feedback from clients around what their ESG or sustainable needs are. And they've made the index methodology evolve over time. For example, initially, it didn't exclude thermal coal names. Now it does. And oil sands and other topics have all been entered into the filtering system behind the index methodology. And so I think that as things evolve in terms of what clients actually want in terms of ESG and sustainability, we'll see more products and indices on the table for them to choose from. But there is a trade-off in that you still want some standardization around these things because ultimately what investors want is liquidity. If you have too many choices and you don't have enough standardization, then that liquidity pool can be hard to achieve.
And thus, trying to have assets coalesce around a few key ESG or sustainable benchmarks is actually very helpful for investors because it allows them to benefit from the liquidity pools that will be available rather than a lot of fragmented offerings in terms of liquidity and choice. So that's important to note as well.
Thank you. Now, I know for the beginning of the webinar, please just submit questions you may have. We've got some wonderful ones coming in. I'm going to transition to a few of them. So we've had a number of questions coming in around what are the non-financial impacts of the S&P 500 Scores and Screens. Can you answer that?
Yeah, sure. So the S&P 500 Scores and Screens Index utilizes various ESG data sets. And one of them is the S&P Global ESG Scores. These scores consider a wide range of sustainability metrics, and they incorporate up to about 1,000 real-world data points for each company. So what the index does is what we've seen is it increases exposure to various ESG themes, and that's calculated using the question-level data in our S&P Global ESG Scores. So, for example, this index provides 11% increased exposure to companies who have a strong climate strategy versus the S&P 500. So, for example, those companies who have reported on emission reduction strategies or have funding in place for reduced emissions. The index also provides 9% higher exposure to companies that ensure effective governance of health and safety performance indicators than those in the S&P 500.
So it's these types of benefits that then can enable our market participants to comfortably align their investments with their values without necessarily compromising their overall index exposure.
Thank you for that help to understand. We also have a question from Stephanie on asking you to comment on the performance period ending at the end of the year, 2021 and 2024. The performance ends on the slide on April 30, 2024.
Yes, I apologize. The index is balanced annually. So I use our annual performance metric. It's balanced annually in April. So I apologize for the slightly dated performance. I was looking at the performance earlier today, and there has been relatively slight underperformance lately. So, for example, the 500 Scores and Screens, one-year performance is 24.2% versus the 500 at 24.4%, three-year 11.8% versus the 500 at 11.9%. I think the key point here is it remains in that the index enables you to integrate certain sustainable values into core feature-like exposure or core feature benchmarks without really sacrificing on performance or diversification. Yeah.
And maybe if I can jump on there, right, as an index user and kind of jump on what you said, Stephanie, on the use cases, right. We still have those kind of ESG-constrained investors, those who cannot invest into the benchmark. And will we be sure that the S&P 500 Scores and Screens fit as their new benchmark? So they will completely shut their eyes on the S&P 500 itself and consider the new benchmark being the Scores and Screens. So I think it's always the largest number of questions that we have from ESG-related investors is indeed how much are they losing out or gaining from being invested according to the agenda that they have for them to forward on the information to their board who made the decisions on sustainability agenda and report back to them how it looks like.
So we have now a couple of cycles of under- and outperformance of ESG behind us, right? If you think of Nordic investors here in Europe, they've been invested in ESG-related investments for more than 10 years. So it comes and goes, and we have a lot of our investors who are asking definitely for performance distribution, but also are a little bit more relaxed with regards to the long-term return, especially if you have one% or two% either overperformance against the benchmark index with a one% tracking error, then you're perfectly in line with the statistical noise that you could expect from such a tracking error. So as long as things do not run out of control, which has not been the case for these indices, we think that investors are relatively relaxed on the short-term excess returns, positive or negative.
I wanted to also mention this not-so-fun fund naming guidelines from the [inaudible] because it is really interesting that the plus for investors that has to be set against the excess returns, positive or negative, the tracking error that they take into consideration. The plus is really that they have an investment that is labeled. Here it is labeled Scores and Screens. The SFDR guidelines come with a lot of different reporting guidelines in Europe, which I would take more than an hour to discuss, but I think on the plus side, investors can, especially in Europe, really see which are the sustainability agenda criteria in the index, how does the index compare against the traditional index, and really try and select their investment in ESG-related indices and ETFs according to those guideline requirements.
I was mentioning it's not so fun because it's a lot of work for us to report on those, but I think there's this great transparency of this to ultimate investors for us tracking this index with regards to the benefits that those indices have against a sustainability agenda.
Yeah. I'll add a couple of things onto what Olivier is saying there. Really, when we've been speaking to investors, they need the toolkit that we were speaking about available to them. So in terms of their individual portfolio, if they're putting stocks in their portfolio, they can do that and tailor that to their ESG needs as they see fit. But when it comes to index-based products, sometimes there needs to be some pragmatism to what's available and how they're going to invest because there's a trade-off there between that liquidity pool that may be available versus having a very customized solution. And really, we've seen there's a degree of other tools available, especially when it comes to futures based on some of these indices. Are they good enough for the way that clients use derivatives inside their portfolio? So, overlay, cash execution.
What is the reason for using a product such as a futures inside the portfolio? And there, what we've seen is that clients have become increasingly pragmatic about using those tools that are available, whether it be futures, ETFs, other things. So I think there is a wide disparity in terms of the way that clients can choose to invest in a sustainable way. But all these things in the toolkit in terms of instruments being available, futures, ETFs, or other things, they all need to complement and be accessible to investors so that they can actually achieve their objectives of the way that they want to invest.
I think we had a question come in about SDGs and how, if at all, S&P Dow Jones Indices thinks about SDGs or looks to integrate them into its methodologies. Can you talk about that?
Yeah, sure. I think I just see the question. First of all, the Scores and Screens index is to allow investors to align their values with their investments, not necessarily to stop people from doing certain activities. And that's what we were looking to achieve at the objective perspective of the index to allow that alignment. With regards to the SDGs, we actually launched the S&P 500 SDG Index about, I'm going to say, about a year ago now. It uses different data sets. We use an SDG-specific data set. And I can talk more about that separately. But SDGs and ESG are slightly different frameworks.
So, for example, with an SDG framework, you're looking more at what the company is actually doing in terms of its revenues, how it's operating, whereas with, for example, an ESG data set, you're looking more at policies and what's going on within the company. So yes, I can speak more broadly to the SDGs going forward in the [uncertain] .
Great. Thank you. So I think we've heard a lot of this from Olivier and Paul about sort of the evolution thus far of the whole market and the ecosystem. How do you see it evolving going forward?
I think we will see people revisit this area. There is a lot of interest. We can see that by all the questions that have come in today. So I think there'll be further evolution in terms of the products that are made available, which are trying to enable clients to achieve ESG or sustainable outcomes. I think there will be more and more assets which coalesce around key benchmarks, though, and that will be really noticeable on the go forward. I think that's already started to happen over the past few years, even though we're still at relatively early stages of some of this trend.
But I do think there are going to be some key benchmarks which are going to be the ones which are ultimately the winners and see assets coalesce around them in the same way that you see that on main parent benchmarks such as the S&P 500 parent index.
Yeah, thank you, Paul. I see it exactly the same way. I think ESG is an addition to an existing relatively broad range of indices and products that are looking to investors. Investors need that increasing granularity in the way that they choose their investments. We've seen it with thematic investing, with backstop-based indices. All of these investments are actually fundamental pieces. So ESG is a type of fundamentally based investment. Most of the ESG-related figures and even SDG-related figures actually relate to the fundamentals of a company. How is it organized from a governance perspective, but also what type of revenues are made? Are these activities actually positively contributing to an SDG agenda, or actually are they meant to be potentially controversial for certain investors?
All of these different shades of fundamental investments are pretty interesting because they're pertaining to the use of data where indices are perfectly positioned to make use of them. And these different solutions for investors, they illustrate how well set up a package of investments can be to answer certain of the investors' constraints. So we are on this journey, and this journey started, I'd assume, around 2012, especially in Europe with what I call forward factor investing, but it started way earlier in the U.S. with growth and value, where fundamental investing has always been there. But that additional level of granularity is something that we will continue seeing in the future, and we're pretty excited to work with index providers to accompany that future.
Great. Well, I think we're getting close to time here. Is there anything else any of you would like to talk about that we weren't able to get to?
No, I think it's been a good discussion. I've enjoyed it. I look forward to speaking more on this and seeing the assets and AUM grow in this case.
Great. Thank you. So go ahead.
I just wanted to say that ESG is definitely a topic where the data is in the details. We see a lot of questions around the details of ESG. It is very important for investors to engage with data providers, with asset managers like us, with index providers like you guys, to discuss and define the exact sustainability preferences of an investor, whether those preferences are enshrined in investment codes. Of course, those preferences are potentially more driven by performance, where they think that sustainability metrics can be the driver of performance. It's very important for us in the investment community to understand what investors have in mind when discussing ESG, again, because the data is in the detail. So we're looking forward to do that in the years to come as well.
Jessie, do you want to start with any final thoughts?
I think we're going to see increased activity in ESG, and this will lead to increasingly changing market regulation. This is particularly evident in Europe as we've seen things like the implementation of SFDR, [inaudible] . However, I think regulation also brings opportunities. So, for example, the EU Sustainable Finance Regulation. We designed and launched our Paris-Aligned and Climate Transition Indices in 2021. So, as an index provider, we are just focused on creating indices to meet their market objectives clearly and transparently so that our investors can understand what it is the index is trying to achieve and align their needs with the indices.
Thank you. So that seems to be all the time we have for questions today. Thank you to everyone, our presenters, those who submitted questions. We've covered a lot today. So if you have any follow-up questions, please use the contact us widget. We'll be glad to assist. For those who want to review anything we've covered, the session is recorded, and you will receive a copy shortly so you can access it once again at your convenience. In addition, when we close out the webinar, you will be routed to our webinar survey form. We'd love to hear your feedback, so please take a few moments to complete it. Thank you for your time today, everyone.
Thanks, Olivier.
Thank you.
Okay.