Values-Based Investing

At Everlake, we always seek to ensure that your values are reflected as fully as possible in the financial planning and investment approach that we recommend.

Sustainable Investing

During the Financial Planning Process we ask you to articulate your interest in sustainable investing. This umbrella term explicitly considers Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors that aim to achieve a sustainability outcome and/or reflect a particular set of values or beliefs.

The Investment Association breaks down sustainable investment into five components: ESG Integration, Stewardship, Exclusions, Sustainability Focus and Impact Investing. These can usefully be illustrated to lie along a spectrum of just how impactful each component is, and how much each strategy might be expected to generate in the way of returns.

Note that Philanthropy is included in the above graphic for context. It is highly impactful, but it should not be classified as investing because those undertaking philanthropic activities are not expecting any financial returns from their actions.

Exclusions

The only portfolio approaches that utilise defined exclusions are our Sustainable World approach. If exclusions are important to you, we will clarify exactly what exclusions are relevant to you and how important they are. The answer to this will be an important driver of whether the Sustainable World approach is appropriate or whether we need to consider a more bespoke advisory portfolio that is able to cater for more unique requirements.

Conflicts Between Sustainable Investing & Value for Money

Your priority as an investor might be to keep costs down, in which case you might prefer to invest in low-cost passive index funds.

Strategies higher up on the spectrum of sustainable investment tend to be more active, so a higher preference for Sustainable Investment would tend to suggest a more expensive portfolio.

It is possible that this could conflict with your preference to keep costs low by investing mainly in low-cost index funds.

In this case, we will discuss with you the various trade-offs involved, and which is more important to you, cost or social & environmental impact. In many cases a pragmatic approach which blends both an index and more active social impact approach to the portfolio will be the right answer.

Taxation

Finally, you may have a preference to invest tax efficiently.

We have developed a range of specialist portfolios which are designed specifically to be taxed under general tax principles (income tax and capital gains tax) rather than the flat rate of exit tax (41% tax year 2022).

For more information, please see our Guide to Taxation of Investments

The Next Step

We are totally focused on delivering a caring, proactive, and personalised wealth management service to our clients. We operate a small team of highly qualified professionals with complementary skills and expertise.

Schedule a call to discuss your tailored investment portfolio