First Affirmative’s key messages to advisors at the 2019 FPA NextGen Gathering:
- Follow your passion to build your practice!
- Enable clients to invest with their hearts – as well as their heads!
- Clients CAN achieve both their financial and impact objectives!
Sustainable, responsible, and impact (SRI) investing is the unique value proposition you’ve been searching for. Most of your clients CARE deeply about environmental, social, and economic issues that impact the world. Climate change, female empowerment, corporate responsibility, animal rights, LGBTQIA issues, and religious values are top of mind amid today’s powerful political, economic, and societal mega-trends. That has created an investment landscape that demands more transparency, more accountability, and more integration of values and beliefs into investment decisions.
Even so, 75% of clients have not talked to their advisor about ESG, we can assume that many don’t even know it’s possible to invest according to one’s values. At the same time, 60% of advisors have little or no interest in SRI/ESG investing. Do the math, and that spells opportunity for advisors to set themselves far apart from the competition.
I recently presented at the FPA NextGen Gathering in New Orleans. It was there I observed that NextGen advisors understand this. They expressed passion and exuberance as we talked about how SRI/ESG investing can enhance their ability to attract and retain clients, grow assets, and make the world a better place. SRI investing is growing rapidly and provides the opportunity to educate, engage, inspire, and deliver performance to clients INDIVIDUALLY. Even with all this enthusiasm, the reality lingers that SRI that SRI/ESG requires “extra effort” and is consequently underserved by financial advisors. But with support from firms like First Affirmative, and new SRI/ESG products emerging, that’s not the case.
Want to learn more about integrating SRI into your practice? Consider attending The Annual SRI Conference, which features a special two-day workshop just for advisors. And visit First Affirmative to see how we help advisors grow their businesses through SRI/ESG investing.
Check out my presentation from FPA NexGen and learn more about the opportunities in SRI, including how First Affirmative can help you get started.
