A huge ‘thank you’ to all of our clients who took part in our 2021 T&T Ethical Investment Survey.
Back in 2016, we realised that our community of Ethical Investors was growing and we were very worried that we might only hold the view of a small amount of our clients when it came to selecting funds and holding them to account.
With this in mind, we launched our annual survey so we could ask our clients ‘what Ethical looks like’ to them. We then pooled these to a collective response so we could check our selection process was in line with the majority of our clients wishes.
This year, we again used the Survey Monkey tool to enable us to reach our clients swiftly. We contacted all 85 email clients and we were so chuffed to receive a 74% response rate mostly within the first 48 hours of sending our survey request.
The survey took an average of around three minutes for our clients to complete and it asked them to score areas of negative and positive screening in order of importance to them.
Poor Human Rights and Animal Testing for Cosmetics were again the big ‘No’ from our clients – so no surprises there. Adult entertainment, Tobacco and Gambling were also big ‘red lines’ for the majority of respondents.
The positive screen (areas you would like to support) was a real eye opener this year. With ‘Ocean Waste’ being the biggest concern for our clients, followed by Air Pollution and Sustainable Timber with Climate Change in third place before Social Housing.
The free comments also offered a fascinating insight into the desire of our collective client family with Climate Change still being important but worries over investment in China and Poor Human Rights making considerable impact as well.
We have sent our final response document to our main fund house contacts as we know they also listen to what we are saying.
I genuinely can’t thank you all enough for helping with this vital survey. Not only does it offer us peace of mind that our screening is still on the right tracks, but it also challenges our thinking and the thinking of the fund houses that we use going forward.
Our clients are a wise old bunch of people! We really care about what you think and Thomas and Thomas wouldn’t be what it is today without your input.
As always, if you have any concerns, questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to let me know. We are here for you 100%. Best wishes.
Darren and the team.
Download our short ethical brochure to get a good idea of our approach and offerings.
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