Ethical Investing – Moneyworks approach

Since 2017 Moneyworks have been analysing the ‘ethical investing’ approach that the fund managers that we recommend take.  Having investments that don’t ‘do bad’ is important to us at Moneyworks and also to many of our clients.

Over the years the field of ‘ethical investing’ has evolved and has become quite complex.  We believe that ‘ethical investing’ as a factor in making investment decisions is still in its early days.

Moneyworks are members of the Responsible Investing Association of Australasia (RIAA), which represents some of the largest investment institutions in New Zealand (including the New Zealand Superannuation Fund).  Through RIAA we have access to forums, discussion papers, conferences, webinars and research on Ethical Investing.

Our advisers have committed to completing the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment (UNPRI) academy course ‘Foundations of Responsible Investing’ in the next 12 months – which means that we will each become a Certified member of RIAA.  This is part of our investment in understanding Ethical Investment.

We are also working on an extensive research project to fully understand the issues around ethical investing (and there are many) with a goal of understanding what our fund managers are saying and actually doing.  This may involve some changes to our recommendations to our clients where ethical investments are a vital factor in their investing approach. 

At present the majority of our recommended fund managers are signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and/or RIAA, but we want to make sure that they are actually walking the talk and not just ‘greenwashing’ their approach to ethical investments.  We have been engaging with our fund managers since 2017 about their approach to Ethical Investing and some have truly impressive processes and philosophies.

At the completion of the initial research process, we hope to have a framework to engage with clients on their expectations from ethical investing and anticipate that we will roll this out to our existing investment clients in calendar year 2022.