Last month we sent out our annual ‘Pro-Ethical’ questionnaire to all of our Pro-Ethical clients. We wanted to know what ‘ethical investment’ looks like collectively to our clients.
Once again we used Survey Monkey to create a very simple questionnaire that allowed our clients to select measures of importance from 0-3 for various potential investments. We kept the format the same as last year, initially asking our clients to grade the importance of avoiding certain holdings such as Tobacco, Gambling and Non Sustainable Timber. We then asked them for their views on positive impacts such as the Environment, Social Housing and Carbon Free Technology.
The average time taken by each client was three minutes and the response rate was staggering this year with 97% of respondents completing the annual survey inside the first five days of sending it out!
This year we were canvasing the view of double the amount of Pro-Ethical clients. We did wonder if the greater number of respondents would greatly alter the collective answers. This turned out to not be the case.
The final outcome of the questionnaire was virtually identical to last year, with our clients expressing the greatest concern around investments that exploit Poor Human Rights, followed swiftly by Pornography and Animal Testing for Cosmetics. Our clients were, once again, less concerned by Alcohol inclusion.
Interestingly, they were showing an increase in concern about Tobacco and Gambling with a slight reduction in concern over the use of Non Sustainable Timber.
The headlines were identical though and we can see that our existing three Thomas and Thomas Pro-Ethical portfolios are absolutely in line with the collective will of our ethical clients.
Client comments included requests to consider investment in Water and Sustainable Farming as well as a desire to try and avoid Palm Oil and support the Environment.
If you would like to see our full response document and more findings from our annual survey – please just email us.
Our huge thanks to all of our clients who responded to the questionnaire so swiftly. We really were delighted by the responses and comments received. As always, we are here if you want to ask anything at all about ethical investing.
Emma
Download our short ethical brochure to get a good idea of our approach and offerings.
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