Ethical/Socially Responsible Investing  

As members of the Ethical Investment Association and UKSIF (the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association), we are able to help those clients who wish to have their investments and pension fund aligned to their ethical views and beliefs. 

What shade of green are you? 

In recent years we have seen significant developments in the ethical investment arena. Gone are the days when the only option was a relatively small range of funds which operated by excluding particular shares or sectors. Nowadays, we have a very wide choice of funds from a significant (and growing) number of fund providers, and in addition to those funds which filter out shares and sectors, there are funds which actively invest in businesses that meet their ethical criteria, and funds which invest in firms exhibiting negative behaviours in order to try and influence change from within. 

Different people have different ethical and moral drivers. Some clients are looking to avoid investing in certain areas for moral or religious reasons, or they may prefer to focus their investment in areas where sustainability is a factor. 

We use a questionnaire which aims to tease out a clients’ ethical drivers, and from that we can then identify a universe of funds which meet those drivers. Taking the clients attitude to risk, and a model asset allocation from AKG, a firm of Consulting Actuaries, we then build a portfolio of funds from the appropriate universe of funds. 

Typically a client will hold around 16 funds in their portfolio – there are occasions whereby a few funds in the portfolio may not meet the clients’ ethical criteria; for example, there are currently no ethical property funds – in situations like this we will discuss with the client whether it is better to have a portfolio which meets their ethical criteria 100% but excludes an asset class, or whether they would prefer to include all asset classes and compromise on a small part of the portfolio. 

These portfolios are usually reviewed and rebalanced on a quarterly basis for those clients who select our advisory service.

If you are interested in discussing ethical/socially responsible investment further, please call us for a free initial meeting.