Nordea among the leaders of asset management brands in Europe

Nordea is climbing Broadridge’s prestigious ranking ladder and is now the second most attractive social responsibility investment brand in Europe.

Broadridge’s ranking is done by professional fund buyers across Europe and according to their latest analysis Nordea has climbed three positions since 2017.

“We are being judged by our clients and that makes it extra satisfying - they feel they trust us to do the job right, without cutting corners. This is an acknowledgement of how far we are now in our ESG integration journey, with experts within the Responsible Investment team working hand in hand with our investment teams and our ability to convey our ESG expertise, be it on the product or regulatory side or to our clients via a highly trained distribution team,” says Nils Bolmstrand, Head of Asset Management.

Ahead of the curve

Eric Pedersen, Head of Responsible Investments underlines that being a leader in responsible investing also means robust processes, good systems, and transparency around what our various investment strategies are and are not. Nordea Asset Management has done its best to stay ahead of the curve, when it comes to new regulations, like the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). Nordea was also early mover in introducing sustainability questions into to investment advisory sessions with customers.

Christophe Girondel, Global Head of Institutional and Wholesale Distribution, adds:

”A key to this recognition was Asset Management’s ability to develop very early a number of tools and initiatives to accompany European distributors along their ESG journey.  Significant resources have been invested in ESG training of the salesforce and a full e-learning package and regulatory training modules to help European distributors have been launched to address the complexity of the topic. This has been a clear contributor to the perception of Nordea as a leader in the area.”

Eric Pedersen highlights that Nordea has been working with the area for decades now:

“Nordea has a long history of responsible investing, but it was only really known to those clients who proactively sought out this type of solutions. In recent years, the interest in responsible investing has grown in the global market, partially because of the SFDR but also for the simple reason that you can’t switch on the TV without seeing flooding, brush fires and melting glaciers. At the same time, we invested early in our team and our capabilities both in depth –  ESG analysts, the sophistication of our processes, quantitative tools and our stewardship - and in breadth, by building our product range, so that we are one of the few having responsible solutions to effectively cover the whole spectrum of asset classes,” he explains.

Spanning across Europe

In the ranking Nordea is now ahead of well-recognised European asset managers. According to Broadridge, Nordea has built an ESG appeal that spans across Europe and a strong position in especially Germany, Italy and Spain.  According to Eric Pedersen the matureness of responsible investing at Nordea and in the Nordics in general is deeply connected to the Nordic region and its “high trust culture”:

“The constituency for responsible investing has been larger in the Nordics, the demand was there, and this meant that building capabilities in this area was a viable proposition earlier than in many other markets. To a large extent the reasons are cultural: The Nordics are egalitarian societies, where a high value is placed on taking responsibility and acting in the common interest. The environment and climate change was put on the agenda early on, but the Nordics are also a progressive and dynamic region with strong competition. It has made us stay on our toes so we today have quite refined ESG model which our clients throughout Europe can take advantage off, “ Eric Pedersen concludes.