What is Ethical Investing?
Ethical Investment is generally known as Socially Responsible Investment (SRI). It refers to financial and investment services which strive to maximise investment performance and social welfare.
In general, ethical investment endeavours to encourage good corporate practices that promote environmental stewardship, consumer protection and human rights. In addition, it undertakes to avoid or limit investment in arms, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, animal testing for cosmetic medical purposes and the like which many people consider to be legitimate areas of concern.
Ethical Investing – Myth Busting
Ethical investing is an opportunity for you to combine both your financial objectives and their ethical preferences within your investment portfolio. It’s not a new concept, yet many remain unaware that it even exists.
For a long time, Advisers have been unable to offer ethical solutions as the complexity and resource involved made it prohibitively expensive for many except high net worth clients and charities. In addition, most approached the subject with scepticism highlighting concerns around costs, risks, complexity and performance.
Today the market is different. With 38% of the public expressing a strong interest in ethical products and services (according to ethical research specialists), it’s not difficult to see why SRI assets in the US have soared to $6.57 trillion (USSIF – 2014), €127bn in Europe (Good Money Week – Nov 2016) and £15bn in the UK (EIRIS – 2015) and hence SRI and Ethical investing is rapidly becoming mainstream.
What are the benefits of investing ethically?
Ethical investment provides the opportunity to invest in ethically sound investment solutions that cater for a range of ethical preferences. It gives investors the option to avoid companies that engage in activities that they would not usually support and proactively invest in companies that recognise their corporate responsibilities.
Investing ethically is now one of the fastest growing areas in financial services with a doubling of Funds under management in the UK between 2005 and 2015.
How can we help?
We find more and more clients are looking for ethical investment and we can do this for you as one of our investment partners specialises in this area. By establishing your ethical views and the level of financial risk you are prepared to take, we can build a bespoke ethical portfolio to suit your requirements.