MSCI Inc. and Barclays are teaming up to create a family of socially responsible global fixed income indices.
On Friday, the two firms announced an agreement to create the co-branded Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) fixed income indices in order to help institutional investors to apply ESG investment strategies to their bond portfolios. Institutional clients will then be able to use the ESG fixed income indices to create index-linked investment products, such as exchange-traded funds, separately managed accounts, and structured products.
In the coming weeks, MSCI and Barclays will begin a consultation process to determine which ESG strategies are most relevant to investors and to define the methodologies of the new indices.
“The objective of MSCI’s ESG business is to provide investors with tools to integrate ESG factors across a broad range of asset classes. Working together with Barclays, we expect these new benchmarks to fill a gap in the market and facilitate the growth of ESG investment,” said Baer Pettit, managing director and head of the MSCI Index Business.