Investment Approach

ESG Strategies

Find out how ESG investing may fit in your clients' portfolios

View our ESG funds

Align your clients' investing style with their personal preferences

Our approach to ESG

You work hard every day to help your clients reach their goals. That's why we're committed to helping you, your clients, and your practice succeed over the long term. It's how our mission is aligned with yours.

With these guiding principles, we offer environmental, social, and governance (ESG) products that can help your clients reach their investing goals while giving them the access and choice to invest according to their preferences.

Investment strategies

Every product Vanguard offers, including our ESG investments, must meet our rigorous standards and align with our time-tested investment philosophy.

We currently offer seven ESG products: four exclusionary index funds and three active funds.

For your clients who want to limit exposure to certain industries or business activities that pose heightened ESG-related risks or conflict with their preferences, such as firearms, tobacco, or fossil fuels, we offer index products that help accomplish this goal.

We also offer active ESG strategies in which managers seek to generate excess return by allocating capital toward companies that meet certain ESG criteria. This may include companies assessed as demonstrating leading ESG practices, showcasing improvements on ESG dimensions, or delivering a positive social and/or environmental impact.

Some clients—those with very specific ideas about causes or issues they want their investments to support or exclude—may be better suited with a more precise solution: Vanguard Personalized Indexing.

Our ESG funds

Explore our lineup of actively managed and index ESG-focused product offerings.

View all ESG funds

Featured insights on ESG strategies

 

Related tools

Use our tools for reliable, objective data for Vanguard and non-Vanguard products,  including ETFs and mutual funds from any fund family. Independent analysis by Morningstar provides unbiased results.

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Disclosures and footnotes

ESG funds are subject to ESG investment risk, which is the chance that the stocks or bonds screened by the index provider or advisor, as applicable, for ESG criteria generally will underperform the market as a whole or, in the aggregate, will trail returns of other funds screened for ESG criteria. The index provider or advisor’s assessment of a company, based on the company’s level of involvement in a particular industry or their own ESG criteria, may differ from that of other funds or an investor’s assessment of such company. As a result, the companies deemed eligible by the index provider or advisor may not reflect the beliefs and values of any particular investor and may not exhibit positive or favorable ESG characteristics. The evaluation of companies for ESG screening or integration is dependent on the timely and accurate reporting of ESG data by the companies. Successful application of the screens will depend on the index provider or advisor’s proper identification and analysis of ESG data. The advisor may not be successful in assessing and identifying companies that have or will have a positive impact or support a given position. In some circumstances, companies could ultimately have a negative or no impact or support of a given position.

Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management, LLC (“Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management”), formerly Just Invest, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor, is an independently operated wholly-owned subsidiary of The Vanguard Group, Inc. (“Vanguard”). Vanguard Personalized Indexing is an asset management technology that has been developed and is offered solely by Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management.

For more information on Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management and Vanguard Personalized Indexing, and to access Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management's Form CRS and Form ADV Part 2A disclosure brochure, please visit the Vanguard Personalized Indexing topic page.