Absolutely. Let's be honest. For some of the companies that are supposed to be leaders in this ESG stuff, it's basically just a box-ticking exercise. It's really important because, through the advent of ETFs, the brokerage fees—the fees that these large asset managers have been able to charge—have basically been destroyed.
You used to be able to, through all kinds of either research dollars or soft dollars, charge hundreds of basis points to your clients for the assets that you were managing. ETFs basically allowed individuals to buy pieces of, let's say, the S&P 500 for a de minimis amount of money. It absolutely destroyed that part of the business.
Financial businesses have been so readily willing to sign up for sustainable investment stuff, green energy policies and ESG, because if they say, “Oh, it's expensive to do the due diligence around this business,” of course, that expense means you're adding value. You're doing your job as the financial guy or girl to see if this business is really meeting their climate objectives.
What you end up doing is you supposedly add value, and then you're allowed to charge a lot of money for that value and, therefore, your margins go up because instead of charging five basis points on a S&P 500 ETF, you're now allowed to charge 60 basis points for a product that basically does the exactly the same with scarcely any reporting.
That's not to mention it's not at all clear they even meet these objectives that they set. For example, there's a vegan climate ETF that charges 60 basis points of management expense ratio that basically just tracks the S&P 500, which you can buy for five basis points. The company is happy. The regulators are happy. The consultants are happy. The only person who seems to lose out is the individual who genuinely cares about either being vegan or about the climate or what have you.