Let Your Values Align With Your Investments/
Have you ever wondered if you could align your investment portfolio with your values? If you would like to make a positive impact on the world around you, but you do not want to sacrifice your returns, ASI’s approach to sustainable investing might just be a good fit for you.
At ASI, our clients’ growing interest in supporting a positive social or environmental impact often sparks conversation around whether they can integrate their principles with their investment goals. One key question always arises – how can they do this without compromising their desired investment outcomes?
ASI’s approach utilizes third-party evaluations of companies’ environmental impact, carbon emissions and mitigation strategies. Stocks are then weighted according to their company’s sustainability score. The higher the score, the greater the weight.
This approach, as opposed to the in-or-out approach of many other sustainable investment managers, leads to broader diversification and a larger opportunity set, while rewarding companies with sustainable business practices. This lets you remain committed to your values and reap the rewards of a diversified portfolio. (Who says you can’t have it all?)
We offer sustainable investing for Personal Wealth Management clients as well as not for profit organizations and institutional clients including 401k and 403b clients.
History of Values-Based Investing
The idea of basing investment decisions on values dates all the way back to the 1960s when social activism created an environment in which more people wanted to align their investments with their values. This type of investing was called Socially Responsible Investing or SRI. SRI is an investing interest strategy in which investors develop strategies and standards to invest only in businesses that strive to abide by acceptable social values. Best known applications of SRI were, initially, religiously motivated by mostly Christian groups. As time went on, shareholder activism began to pressure corporate involvement with environmental concerns to propel growth for environmental, social and governance investing, often called ESG. To learn more about the history of this type of investing, please visit: ESG Investing Comes of Age
Our Approach
ASI has partnered with industry-leading firms, such as Dimensional Fund Advisors, Wasmer Schroeder and Invesco to deliver big idea solutions for our clients who are interested in implementing sustainable screening. At ASI, we believe that helping individuals and institutions achieve their investment goals requires a strategy that is broadly diversified, based on sound investment principles, and efficiently implemented. After years of research and countless hours of interviews, modeling and looking under the hood to understand exactly how investment managers are delivering on their sustainable investment promises, we believe we have the solution.
Dimensional Sustainable Investments
Dimensional Fund Advisors is one of largest and most established investment managers in the US. Dimensional’s investment solutions have always considered investors’ constraints and preferences. Certain strategies have been tailored to address the needs of clients with particular social considerations, such as the exclusion of tobacco companies or firms involved with gambling, among others. Dimensional has also successfully helped clients with sustainability concerns through the Dimensional US Sustainability portfolios and the Dimensional International Sustainability investment portfolios. As of July 31, 2020, each of these funds has matched or outperformed its benchmark net of fees since inception in March 2008, clearly showing that you can screen a portfolio for sustainability and still provide a diversified portfolio, without having to sacrifice returns.
If you would like to learn more about the sustainable investing at ASI and performance results, please request the white paper at info@asiwealthmanagement.com or speak to one of our advisors.