Almost three-quarters of investors want to increase their impact investing allocations in the next three years. But are Europe’s top companies moving any closer to creating positive impacts?

Our partners, impak Analytics, found that just 4% of the combined revenue from companies in the STOXX 600 (an index that covers 90% of the market capitalisation of the stock market in Europe) positively contributed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Worse still, within the STOXX 600, 98% of companies negatively contribute to SDG 16, Peace, justice and strong institutions. In other words, almost every company analysed in the STOXX 600 negatively contributes to the SDGs. The report demonstrates that there is a long way to go before companies sufficiently acknowledge their negative contributions. Investing in traditional multi-national indices isn’t suitable for investors seeking to invest in companies making a net positive impact.

When we built our suite of impact ETFs, we worked closely with impak Analytics. If you’d like to learn more about using the IMP framework to classify companies here (page 36).