Getting started – in sustainable, responsible, ethical and ESG investments
At first glance the sustainable, responsible and ethical investment (SRI) market can appear complicated.
Some of the myths that have grown up around the area can also be misleading and unhelpful.
The site is free to use, designed for financial advisers and other financial services intermediaries – but open to all.
Our work aims to highlight the many differences between sustainable fund strategies – and make it easy for users to find funds that match their clients’ many different needs.
The site includes (access to) a fact find support tool – SRI Stylefinder – and a fund research tool – Fund EcoMarket.
The filter options and links on Fund EcoMarket make it easier for (UK based) intermediaries to match clients’ personal aims and opinions to fund options and save the research in report form for your audit trail.
When starting out it is important to understand that different strategies have evolved for different reasons.
Three of the most common reasons clients are interested in this area are:
- To reflect their personal sustainability related concerns and/ or ethical values or opinions
- To bring issues such as sustainability or climate change into account because it makes sound financial sense to do so
- To help effect positive change (or have an ‘impact’) through where they invest
Different strategies have placed different emphasis on these aims.
As with any area of investment the best way to work out which options might suit an individual investor is by asking questions…
- We recommend financial advisers ask all clients whether or not they are interested in this area as part of their standard fact-finding process (see ‘Advice Process’ for further support).
- For interested clients we recommend advisers then proceed to ask further, more specific, questions. This can be in the form of a high level ‘StyleFinder’ questionnaire or by searching for specific strategies.
You findings can then be entered into Fund EcoMarket to find potentially relevant fund options, that you can then research further as you would any other fund.
The free to use on-line ‘SRI StyleFinder’ client questionnaire helps you to get started. As your client select the statements that most closely match their personal aims to identify the ‘styles’ of fund that are most likely to suit their personal aims and opinions.
- Select relevant statements on questionnaire to generate list of best fit SRI Styles
- Enter your findings into the SRI Styles filter on Fund EcoMarket to help narrow your search to potentially relevant funds
- Refine your search further by adding in additional client specific requests (additional Fund EcoMarket filter options)
Please note: this for information purposes only and does not represent advice or endorsement of any kind. These are our suggestions based on experience and research. We are not authorised to offer financial advice and can not deal directly with individual investors.