Socially responsible investing (SRI, for its acronym in English socially responsible investing; ISR, in Spanish) is called the investment that not only considers profitability, but also the social or environmental impact. Investment funds that follow this SRI or ESG (Environmental, social and governance criteria) are called responsible funds.

The appearance of responsible funds that apply the SRI criterion occurred around the year 2000. In Europe in 2014 they represented 2% of financial funds and moved around 100 billion euros, when in 2000 they only had 15 billion. The country where they have spread the most is France, followed by the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany. Worldwide, it is estimated that they can move around 300 billion euros.[1]​.

The responsible funds are mostly institutional funds, such as pension funds or foundations, and they choose the companies in which they invest the money they have available, taking into account social or environmental criteria and valuing their good management, although without losing sight of profitability, even above the SRI criterion, as recognized by a manager in Spain of a German responsible fund: "Evidently, we not only invest in securities that have the environment, good governance and social responsibility integrated into them. your business, but also in securities whose market value is going to rise. The weight of SRI objectives is much lower than that of financial objectives."[1]​.

SRI has grown in the world since 2000. The Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA) annually publishes the World Report on Sustainable Investment.[2] According to this report, this investment grew from 18,275.93 billion US dollars ($) in 2014 to 22,890.14 billion dollars in 2016. In Spain in 2016 ISR amounted to 185,423 million euros (€).[3]​.