What were people searching for on Fund EcoMarket in 2025?

2025 saw significant interest in FCA’s SDR labelling regime amongst users of the Fund EcoMarket database.

‘Sustainability Focus’ was the most commonly searched SDR label, ranking number one in our searches.  All SDR labels were in the top 10 searches.

Other SDR related filter options, such as ‘Unlabelled…’ were also commonly searched, with most being within the top 33 searches during 2025.

SDR labelling related searches were in the following order:

• Sustainability Focus (1)
• Sustainability Impact (2)
• Sustainability Improver (4)
• Sustainability Mixed Goals (6)
• Working towards adopting label (10)
• Unlabelled with sustainable characteristics*(16)
• Not eligible to use label (33)

This points to a significant interest in the SDR labelling regime  – as well as perhaps the uniqueness of our research.

The use of our SRI Styles remained high in 2025 also.  These continue to add value to users as they are more issue specific than SDR labels, work alongside our ever popular SRI Stylefinder questionnaire and are not restricted to UK funds.

Our most commonly searched SRI Styles, during 2025, were:

• Sustainable Style (7)
• Environmental Style (11)
• Ethical Style (15)

Some thoughts on the popularity of SDR labels and SRI Styles related searches

Labels, styles and other awards and classifications are intended to make finding relevant fund/investment options more straightforward.

They help give users a sense of a strategy and perhaps possible suitability, which is important for ‘getting started’. However many clients care about specific issues, so our view is (and always has been) that these albeit useful ‘short cuts’ should be used alongside more precise, issue specific, information – such as our filters.

The highest ranking specific issues that people searched for on Fund EcoMarket last year were:

• Armaments manufacturers avoided (14)   (Note:  users have the option to search for options with and without armaments exposure in the same filter field)
• Coal, oil & / or gas majors excluded (22)
• Tobacco and related product manufacturers excluded (29)

Interestingly, perhaps, all three of these relate to exclusions – which points to a potential misalignment with SDR, which is focused on positive outcomes (although of course funds may have exclusions if they wish!).

My sense is that whilst most of us who are keen on this area want to encourage and support positive real world outcomes, and like to see positively focused objectives, retail clients in particular need the reassurance of exclusions in order to be sure that their money is not invested in ways they are uncomfortable with.

In retail investments market simplicity is always likely to be important – as a lack of exclusions risks being interpreted as intentional opacity, or possibly greenwash.

Other common searches, such as product types, asset type, and geographic regions remind us that sustainability information is being integrated into financial plans and portfolio planning.  Sustainability issues, labels and options are part of investment decision making …  enhancing, not replacing, other aspects of financial planning and analysis!

(*Note – the wording of this filter has now been updated to differentiate between funds with and without CFDs – ie whether or not they promote sustainability characteristics).

Top 50 Fund EcoMarket searches during 2025: