Deutsche Bank Wealth Management is significantly accelerating its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy as a new generation of wealthy clients increasingly ask their advisers to help them add purpose to investment performance.

The wealth management business of Deutsche Bank is adopting ESG ratings from MSCI, a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, to give clients valuable standardised information on non-financial risks and opportunities when making investment decisions.

It is also further extending its ESG product offering across discretionary wealth management and investment advisory, and launching new research, client materials and events.

Fabrizio Campelli, Global Head of Wealth Management, said: “This fast-growing area is of critical relevance for our clients and for the future of our business and society.”

He added: “ESG comes up more and more often in our regular discussions with clients. ESG analysis, guidance and investments are rapidly becoming not just an important component of our client offering but the essential foundation for everything we do.

“A new generation of clients and society as a whole are becoming increasingly aware of the responsibility that comes with wealth and the positive impact that ESG factors can have on returns. They are rightly demanding that we enable them to add purpose to investment performance.”

ESG investing is estimated already to represent more than $30 trillion of assets across five of the world’s major markets, or about a third of global assets under management, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance. Surveys have found that the vast majority of millennials say a company’s ESG track record is important when they are deciding whether to invest.

Deutsche Bank seeks across all its divisions to promote sustainable business, increase transparency and ensure that its risk-management processes help to avoid negative environmental and social impacts arising from its core businesses. The company has disclosed sustainability and non-financial information every year since 2002, most recently for 2018.

Recent Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Chief Investment Office research and roadshows have featured ESG as a central theme. It has also played a prominent role in major client events such as the longstanding Wealth With Responsibility summit in Germany. The keynote speaker at the upcoming Next Generation Innovation Summit in San Francisco in November is Al Gore, the former US Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist.