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A widening gap: HSBC Sustainability Sentiment Survey

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A changing landscape

HSBC Sustainability Sentiment Survey

Covering sustainability, we have regular discussions with investors around the world. These discussions reveal wide differences in the approach, state, regulation and pace of sustainability considerations across regions. We believe a survey is a good way to document the lay of the land and understand both backward-looking and forward-looking views.

Our latest survey was conducted by Survation from 21 May to 4 June 2025, with a sample size of 144 professionals working in the financial services industry across the globe in roles related to sustainability decision-making. The respondents represent 4.89trn in assets under management (AuM) across 104 institutions.

So what were the findings?

A widening gap. The results suggested the contrast between those investors who continue to prioritise sustainability, and those who do not, remains stark. At the top end, sustainability incorporation has grown. In contrast, the proportion who consider sustainability less has remained fairly consistent across our surveys. A similar contrast is seen in attitudes towards non-listed sustainability-related investments.

Regional variations remain strong. Although our results show that a growing number of firms choose to embrace a global firm-wide approach to incorporating sustainability, we observe significant differences across regions. Sustainability is not as high on the agenda in North America as in Asia and Europe, the survey suggests; we believe this is unsurprising when considering political divergences and sustainability pushback.

Investors are still divided on the usefulness of disclosures and reporting. Those who find new disclosure rules “very helpful” has risen, yet those who do not find them helpful make up the majority of votes in our survey. This suggests that simplification of some rules such as the CSDDD may be welcomed by stakeholders.

Funding outlook. Looking to the future, investors expect the majority of transition funding to come from private credit and governments. Regions are divided on this, with Europe seeing a bigger role for private credit and North America looking to government and development finance institutions.

Evolution continues. The survey suggests a rapidly changing and uncertain world with significant divisions in incorporation and engagement. However, this isn’t simply a pro- or anti-sustainability story – it’s about evolving to ensure a successful transition for stakeholders while maintaining integrity, consistency and transparency.

Would you like to know more? Click here to read the full report. Please note, you must be a subscriber to HSBC Global Investment Research to access this link.

To find out more, including how to subscribe, please email us at AskResearch@hsbc.com

About the survey

about-survey

We have renamed the HSBC Sustainability Sentiment Survey (previously the ESG Sentiment Survey) to reflect our updated focus on sustainability research and integration. The sample size varies from survey to survey and, as such, changes are comparable but not ‘like for like’. Also, given that respondents vary by question and by region, we can often garner signals in the data rather than representation or statistical significance.

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