SRI appeals to youth market

ETHICAL investing is a great way for financial planners to sign up younger clients, co-chair of the Ethical Investment Association Janice Carpenter says.

Carpenter, who has 10 years experience in the financial planning business with her Melbourne-based firm Ethical Investment Services, says socially responsible investments (SRI) tend to appeal to the “younger than average financial planning client”.

She says ethical investors tend to be female service professionals (teachers, nurses, architects, etc) and they are accumulators, as opposed to being retirees.

Carpenter told the conference that financial planners tend to ignore the socially responsible tendencies of their clients and stick to the numbers.

Her advice to the conference is that planners should ask their clients some leading questions to find out what their attitudes are to ethical investing. The idea being that the planner should try and rate a client’s ethical profile, just as they do with risk.

She says advisers who sell ethical investments need to be fully informed about the funds they use. This includes knowing what stocks they hold, how socially responsible they really are, and how the funds treat environmental issues.

One of the good things to come out of SRI is that fund managers are being far more open about what is in their portfolios. She says investors tend to prefer funds that have both positive and negative screens.