One way to invest in alignment with your values is to prioritize what means the most to you. Many of the topics that are rising to the top today are the environment, social considerations and corporate governance. ESG is a global movement, promoted by the United Nations and small companies like us.

For us, ESG investing means doing well and doing good; we don’t believe we have to give up investment performance in order to invest in alignment with our values.

A recent research report shows that investors who make investment decisions in alignment with their values may be making an impact on the environment. Many companies want to achieve higher ESG scores, and are changing their environmental impact to attract more ESG investors.

To read more about this, click here. An important disclosure here is that correlation is not causation. In other words, just because these companies environmental scores are improving, does not necessarily mean that investors caused them to get better. Still, this is promising.

To read more about this, click here.

One of the “hot button” issues, pun intended, is the impact on carbon creation. The researchers measure all of the investments in ways that are important for the environment. These include:

• Low carbon designation
• Carbon intensity vs. benchmark

Another measurement used by the research team is to measure how much of the portfolio is in any of the following business lines.

• Thermal coal
• Thermal coal extraction
• Oil sands extraction
• Arctic oil and gas exploration
• Oil and gas production
• Oil and gas products and services
• Oil and gas generation

Our ESG portfolios have zero exposure or, lower than the benchmark exposure, to these business lines. For the latest details, ask your financial advisor!

Our ESG research team also measures what type of products are created by the investments. The issues they are looking for include:

• Adult entertainment
• Alcohol
• Animal testing
• Abortive/Contraceptives/Stem Cell
• Controversial Weapons
• Fur and Specialty Leather