Ethical Investing – how do we know what our fund managers are doing?

There are a number of factors that we take into account in our process, which will be built on over time.

1.    Are the Fund Managers Signatories to UN PRI and or/RIAA

2.    What published information do the fund managers have on their approach to Ethical Investing

3.    Direct questioning of the fund managers that we recommend

The team at Moneyworks are known in the industry for asking difficult questions of our fund managers, and not taking their answers at face value.  This extends to our questioning around Ethical Investing, which will become more robust as we gain more expertise and knowledge – and therefore can ask more robust questions.

4.    Research providers information

Moneyworks subscribes to multiple investment research providers, and two of them have analysis of ESG/Sustainable/Responsible investing approaches, Morningstar and Lonsec. 

Both research houses partner with specialist ethical investment researchers that analyse and rate and score companies around the world, and that research flows into the research reporting on Morningstar and Lonsec.

Lonsec’s research is very new and will be rolled out over the next 12 months, Morningstars’ Research is quantitative and based on the financial impact of the ESG measures that a company takes, which we consider to be a starting point, but also information to build into our overall analysis.

5.    General Information – news articles, research reports and information available from a range of publications that have particular focus on these issues, including New York Times, Financial Times, Fortune and Time magazines.