Sustainable Bottom Line: The top 10 fund management firms offering focused long-term sustainable mutual funds and ETFs account for 73% of the segment’s total assets.
Notes of Explanation: Base line data not adjusted to reflect the shift in the ranking of Brown Advisory from its eighth spot at the end of 2024 to twelfth position at the end of November 2025. Fund prospectuses, Morningstar and Sustainable Research and Analysis LLC.
Observations:
• The top 10 fund managers offering focused long-term sustainable mutual funds and ETFs (excluding money market funds) ended the month of November with $275.8 billion in net assets versus $377.7 billion for the entire long-term focused sustainable funds segment, representing a narrow 50 basis points uptick to 73% of the segment’s total long-term assets under management relative to December 2024. This is up by $19.8 billion, from $255.0 billion at the end of 2024, for an increase of 8% against a backdrop of a 15.2% average annual year-to-date total return posted by the focused sustainable long-term universe of funds.
• Much of that gain, or $14 billion representing 75% of the total, accrued to the top two firms, namely BlackRock and Vanguard. These two firms are the two largest providers of low‑cost sustainable investing index solutions, and they account for a focused sustainable funds market share of 30%. Their entrenched positions, low to lower-cost sustainable building blocks, widely used in retirement plans, adviser model portfolios, and institutional allocations, benefited from the market rally in equities, demand for international and emerging markets funds as well as funds with lower risk profiles. That said, Vanguard was alone among the top ten fund firms that experienced implied inflows based on an estimation of market effects.
• DFA, which ranks sixth as of the previous month-end and posted the third largest gain in net assets, saw its assets increase by $2.6 billion during the first eleven months of the year. It also benefited from estimated market results and inflows into the firm’s international and emerging market funds.
• Except for the composite 33.9% average return posted by the funds managed by Victory and driven by the performance of the Victory Global Energy Fund, the top three asset gathering firms also posted the best composite average returns (BlackRock, 18.1%, Vanguard, 15.8% and DFA, 17.7%).
• Active equity managers Parnassus and Brown Advisory experienced outflows and declines in net assets overall, and in the process, the firms dropped from their third and eighth spots at the end of 2024 to the fourth and twelfth positions (falling outside of the top 10) at the end of November.
• At the same time, mid-sized firms Calvert, Nuveen, Franklin Templeton, three firms dominated by actively managed funds, and Invesco, dominated by index funds, saw AUM growth primarily from market appreciation which offset negative fund flows. Impax Asset Management joined Parnassus as the second of only two of the top ten firms at the end of November to experience a decline in net assets, attributable to institutional investor withdrawals.
• Finally, Victory Capital Management rebranded its funds following the 2025 combination between Amundi US and Victory Capital pursuant to which Amundi became a strategic shareholder of Victory. It may have gained assets and, in the process, improved its ranking by moving into the top ten to take the eighth spot.
