The banking group says its SRI and impact investing offerings are gaining momentum and clients.

At a time when investing to achieve an impact that goes beyond pure financial returns continues to be a theme, bank and wealth manager BNP Paribas has reported that it has invested €7.7 billion ($8.58 billion) for clients in "socially responsible projects".

The Paris-listed lender, which operates worldwide, issued the figure this week at the conclusion of a series of events in France about "responsible finance". There is growing momentum behind this area of investment, the bank said, citing recent research from The Toniic Institute saying that 72 per cent of all millennials intend to transfer assets into impact investing over the next five years.

"BNP Paribas Wealth Management is...pursuing an initiative to encourage social engagement among the fund managers with whom it works so as to ensure that environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, together with policies on exclusions and on voting, transparent information and social commitment, are integrated into the investment process. In just one year, close to 50 fund management companies have come on board this initiative," it said in a statement.

Although impact investing - sometimes also called socially responsible investing - is not yet a major slice of the total assets managed, there are $60 billion of impact investing assets under management, and $12.2 billion of fresh investments were expected to be put in place last year, according to the Global Impact Investing Network. One forecast has impact investing AuM topping $3 trillion over the next decade. GIIN defines the area as: "Investments made into companies, organisations, and funds with the aim to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. Impact investments can be made in both emerging and developed markets, and target a range of returns from below market to market rate, depending upon the circumstances." (See more on the topic here.)

There remains debate about exactly what the boundaries of impact investing are and how this approach differs from other approaches, such as SRI, where investors can use "filters" to avoid certain areas of activity, such as those deemed bad for the environment, or involving child labour or the production of dangerous substances.

Firms such as BNP Paribas, aiming to capture younger clients who, it is said, are more interested in such ideas than their parents, has made a point of supporting impact investing, as well as championing areas of advice around philanthropy in recent years.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management said it has rolled out SRI offerings for clients in Italy and the US since the start of 2016.

To put its SRI investments into an overall context, BNP Paribas Wealth Management oversaw a total of €325 billion of assets as at March this year.