Sustainability factors are affecting mainstream investing choices, according to Michael Jantzi, president and founder of Jantzi Research.

The head of a socially responsible investing (SRI) research firm spoke Friday at an Ivey School of Business forum on sustainability in Toronto..

He said that sustainability metrics—those that measure environmental, social and governance concerns—are increasingly being taken into account in mainstream investment circles.

Jantzi points to his firms seven-year old Jantzi Social Index as an indicator that socially responsible firms can prove strong in the capital markets. The index includes 60 Canadian companies that have passed a variety of social and environmental screens. Since its launch in 2000, the index has outperformed the S&P/TSX Composite and the S&P/TSX 60.

Despite his advocacy, Jantzi is well aware that it’s not all sunshine and huge returns in socially responsible circles. For example, he notes that the Dow Jones Sustainability Index—which many U.S. companies are scrambling to get into—has underperformed. “I’m talking a huge element of underperformance,” he said. He also points to the rise in hedge funds and private equity, neither of which take sustainability factors into account.

While Jantzi does not state flatly that sustainability pays—in fact, there is little research showing a link between good practices and share price—he “takes solace in the fact that the conversation is advancing.”

Jantzi cites research that shows Canada had $503 billion in socially responsible assets under management in 2006, up from $65.5 billion in 2004.

In May of 2007, a SRI fund called iShares Jantzi ETF was launched, adding to the 70 SRI mutual funds that were already available in Canada. But this one brought the big financial institutions into the mix, as Barclay’s Global Investors issued it. Some observers saw this as a sure sign that SRI had hit the mainstream.

Just a couple of months later, RBC launched its own SRI funds. Jantzi says during meetings with Canada’s biggest bank (his firm partnered with RBC on the fund), one executive quipped that sustainability is like governance was 10 years ago.

Jantzi is careful to note that there are many definitions for this type of investing—ethical, green, sustainable, socially responsible—but whatever the moniker, he says the “intersection of sustainability and finance” is not going anywhere.

“Sustainability in capital markets is not transitory—it’s here to stay,” he said today, during the presentation. It’s important, he says, to improve transparency, get the information out there for analysts and let them do with it what they will.

“There is an enormous amount of brain power in the capital markets,” he says. “I think it would be a mistake for us to think we can tell them what’s important.”