Fund managers, crowdfunding platforms and other fintechs offer numerous solutions to give meaning to your savings. Buy a tree or a piece of forest; finance companies that bring drinking water all over the world; helping a farm in its organic transition or, more simply, ensuring that your savings preserve biodiversity: here are four very concrete themes.
They also offer performance prospects uncorrelated from usual markets, which makes them good diversification investments. Some of them also entitle you to tax savings.
Access to water
Access to water is a crucial issue, both for populations and for businesses. However, this natural resource tends to become rarer. The management company Pictet made it an investment theme more than twenty years ago, by creating the first fund dedicated to water in 2001. It has since been followed by a slew of managers (BNP Paribas AM, Robeco , Thematics…). “Our Pictet Water fund helps finance the production of drinking water,” explains Hervé Thiard, Managing Director of Pictet Asset Management France. “Concretely, we invest in industrial water distributors, such as the French giants Veolia and Suez.”
The strategy has proven successful in the past. Since its creation, the value of the fund has gained… 531%, well beyond the performance of the MSCI World index (which reflects international equity markets), up 240% over the same period. And the outlook is strong. “The average dividend of companies in the sector is 2% per year and we estimate that the growth of the theme is 4 or 5%, which allows us to expect average annual growth of 6 to 7%,” argues Hervé Thiard. As this fund and its alter egos are widely referenced in life insurance contracts, you can also benefit from the tax and inheritance advantages of this envelope.
Another option is to bet on ETFs (exchange-traded funds or listed index funds), which replicate the performance of a thematic index. Some hold shares directly exposed to water while others are so-called synthetic, that is to say they use derivatives to achieve their objective. This last option is double-edged: it is more complex to understand, but it allows these ETFs to be accommodated in an equity savings plan. This is for example the case of the Amundi PEA Water fund. All these products are accessible with a few hundred euros. Be careful, however: these are equity products, subject to stock market volatility.
The yield on all solidarity savings accounts has risen sharply over the past eighteen months
© / Wenjin Chen/Getty Images/Istock
The agricultural transition
To invest online in agriculture, even with a few dozen euros, two possibilities are open to you. Firstly, you can turn to MiiMOSA, the historic financing platform in this area. This fintech offers to lend money to players in the agricultural world for a period of between six months and seven years, in exchange for remuneration displayed between 5% and 6.5% per year. “We finance small farmers such as projects led by Danone, Nestlé, Lesieur, Pom’Pote…” says Florian Breton, the founder. Renewable energy projects, such as methanization, can yield up to 8.5%.
Warning: although the return seems very attractive, the risk of capital loss is high in the event of bankruptcy of the company to which you are providing credit. In addition, payment delays are numerous – almost a third of projects in 2023. “This sector involves risks, in particular climatic hazards and variations in the price of raw materials,” recognizes the entrepreneur. It is therefore essential to diversify your investments across several projects.
A second option is offered by another start-up called Hectarea. Newly created, it offers to finance the purchase of hectares to then rent them. The system is based on bonds backed by a mortgage guarantee. “We propose investing in land, as savers are accustomed to doing in stone,” explains Paul Rodrigues, founder of Hectarera. “With an added impact!” Indeed, for each acquisition, the platform ensures the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices. The target profitability is 3% net per year for rent (rental income), to which is added the valuation of the land. “Agricultural land in France is two to six times cheaper than that of neighboring countries,” he adds. Which gives us hope of catching up in the years to come.
Finally, within life insurance, turn to the civil company Terres Invest from Vatel Capital, which also allows you to invest in agricultural land.
The forest
Acquiring plots of forest yields little. The yield is estimated between 0 and 2% at most, mainly coming from wood cutting. But some see significant potential for growth provided you have time to spare – at least ten years. “There is a growing need to purchase carbon credits and – soon – biodiversity credits, by companies seeking to compensate for the pollution they generate, what we call negative externalities,” explains Jonathan Dhiver, founder of best-gf.com. In addition, there are numerous tax advantages. You benefit from an income tax reduction of 18% (subject to keeping the shares for at least five and a half years). This investment is also exempt from real estate wealth tax and benefits from a 75% reduction in inheritance tax.
Be careful, however, not to invest in a single piece of land, because the slightest storm or the first fire would literally reduce your investment to nothing. It is better to diversify your portfolio across several sites, located in several departments and presenting varied species of wood. This is precisely what the forestry investment groups (GFI) offer, whose entry ticket starts at 1,000 euros. Let us cite Vatel (managed by Vatel Capital), France Valley Forêts (France Valley), Forecial 2 (Fiducial Gérance), Epiforêts 1 (Epicure AM) or even CoeurForest (Sogenial Immobilier)… They allow you to become an owner in at least five different forests. France Valley Patrimoine is the largest of them, with 71 forests in its portfolio, but it requires a minimum subscription of 33,150 euros.
The biodiversity
“50% of global GDP depends on biodiversity,” underlines Marie Walbaum, responsible investment specialist at AXA IM. Indeed, many activities rely on access to natural resources to produce the goods we need. However, curbing the loss of biodiversity requires significant resources. Faced with this challenge, some fund managers have created targeted strategies. “We launched an equity fund, AXA WF ACT Biodiversity, with an investment strategy for 2050 focused on preserving life on land, water and air,” continues Marie Walbaum. Some other players have done the same: Lombard Odier IM, UBP, BNP Paribas AM, La Banque Postale AM… All these investments are recent and have yet to prove themselves in the long term.
The subject also concerns green neo-banks like Green Got or committed life insurance distributors like Goodvest. For the latter, non-respect for biodiversity constitutes a prohibitive criterion in the selection of funds for its contract. “We systematically take the best students from each sector, using the criterion of average species abundance, calculated per square kilometer,” explains Joseph Choueifaty, the founder of Goodvest. This unit of measurement, the most advanced to date, aims to quantify the health of ecosystems and the species richness of a region. Other products could emerge in the coming years.
An article from the special report “Responsible Investments”, published in L’Express on May 30.
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