top of page
FOR PEOPLE
AND PLANET
NEWS & ACTIVITIES
Find out about our news, activities and events. You can also access resources and our media page, where you will find links to our latest press releases, our communications team and a selection of the news stories written about FaithInvest and our activities.
QUICK LINKS
LATEST HEADLINES
Contact our communications team.
Our 2024 Annual Report: A busy year of change and consolidation
2024 was a year of change and consolidation for FaithInvest, as we outline in our newly published Annual Report. We navigated leadership transitions, sharpened our focus on what faith communities most practically need, and kept building the bridge between faith beliefs and investment decisions. Executive Chair Dave Zellner 'That image of a bridge has long guided our work because it is what we seek to be: a trusted span between values and action, between faith communities and
Susie Weldon
How the global religious landscape changed from 2010 to 2020
The world’s population expanded from 2010 to 2020, and so did most religious groups, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of more than 2,700 censuses and surveys. But while some religious groups grew, others did not keep pace with global population growth, and the total global percentage of people affliiated with a faith or belief dropped from 84% to 75.8% , according to the report, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2010 . Since 2010, the share o
Susie Weldon
New guide 'a practical roadmap' to help faiths invest in line with values
Press release: The movement of faith-based investing is growing fast as increasing numbers of religious groups seek to ensure their values are reflected in their investments. Now non-profit FaithInvest has published a comprehensive guide, From Faith Values to Investment , t o help faith-based organisations develop faith-consistent investing (FCI) programmes. FaithInvest Executive Chair Dave Zellner says the guide is very timely given the sharp rise in interest in FCI in r
FaithInvest
'Let us take seriously the business of religion' – Martin Palmer
FaithInvest took part in an unusual and fascinating international forum held by the University of Hong Kong on the future of community...
Susie Weldon
New Masterclass helps investment professionals engage the trillion-dollar faith-based market
Press release: Faith-based investors globally control trillions in assets , yet most investment professionals are missing opportunities...
Susie Weldon
FaithInvest gathering of faiths in Australia live-streamed to 37,000 people globally
FaithInvest has co-hosted an extraordinary gathering of faiths and traditional cultures in Australia – which was also live-streamed to...
Susie Weldon
A lively FCI Forum focuses on building a new ecosystem for Catholic investing
We had a fascinating and inspiring FCI Forum on Catholic Investing, which offered a wide-ranging analysis of what is needed to develop a...
Susie Weldon
Radical engagement: Seven everyday habits for transforming systems
In these uncertain and conflict-driven times, it's vital to find ways of holding on to a sense of hope and agency as we strive to be...
Susie Weldon
Newly released FaithInvest report challenges the FCI 'performance penalty myth'
FaithInvest has released a new report: Faith-Consistent Investing: Challenging the Performance Penalty Myth. This paper examines the...
FaithInvest
A stellar line up of speakers – including the head of Vatican Bank – for our June FCI forum on Catholic investing
This year was already shaping up to be a significant year for the Catholic Church, even before the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday...
Susie Weldon
The trillion-dollar faith-driven investment market is expanding fast – but many faiths still lack confidence
Our Faithful Finance course aims to change that. Starts May 20. Book by May 9 for our Early Bird Offer Press release: There has been a...
Susie Weldon
Faithful Finance course starts May 20 – book now for our £250 early bird offer
The next round of our popular Faithful Finance training course on the fundamentals of faith-consistent investing starts on Tuesday May...
Susie Weldon
Pope Francis dies on Easter Monday, aged 88. World leaders pay tribute
FaithInvest expresses its deep sorrow and offers condolences to the global Catholic community upon the death of His Holiness Pope...
Susie Weldon
Bridging the Gap: New masterclass on engaging the trillion-dollar faith investment market
The faith-driven investment market is expanding rapidly – with faith-based asset owners managing trillions of dollars of investments ...
Susie Weldon
Survey: What do faith-based investors want from their asset managers?
This year FaithInvest is complementing its Faithful Finance training programme with a new course designed for investment professionals...
FaithInvest
Launch of masterclasses in engaging faith-based investors for industry professionals
FaithInvest is launching a new programme of masterclasses aimed at equipping investment industry professionals with the tools and...
FaithInvest
Faith-based investors: The time to lead is now
In times of uncertainty, leadership often emerges from unexpected places. Today, as we witness mounting pressure against sustainable and...
Dave Zellner
How can faith-based investors influence corporate behaviour? Learn more at our FCI forum on March 6
We've got a fantastic FCI Forum coming up on Thursday March 6, exploring how faith-based investors can influence corporate behaviour and...
FaithInvest
Dr Lorna Gold appointed to head the Laudato Si' Movement
FaithInvest congratulates Dr Lorna Gold on her appointment as Executive Director of the Laudato Si’ Movement – one of FaithInvest’s...
FaithInvest
Mathew Jensen takes up a new challenge
Mathew Jensen, CFA Director of Faith-consistent Investing Programmes Mathew Jensen has left FaithInvest to take up a position as Senior...
FaithInvest
A new FCI ecosystem to be developed for Christian investors
FaithInvest came away from the recent Mensuram Bonam conference in London, UK, convinced that the event marked a watershed moment for...
FaithInvest
Our third Faithful Finance training course just finished. How did it go?
What a wonderful Faithful Finance training course we have just completed, with participants from as far afield as Ireland and Sri Lanka,...
FaithInvest
Working with your investment managers: new CIG resource
The UK-based Church Investors Group has published a new resource to support church investors in the process of working with their...
FaithInvest
Mensuram Bonam summit marks major step forward for FCI in the Catholic Church
Catholic institutions have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest – but almost no investment options if they want to ensure their...
FaithInvest
Solving the two-pocket problem: aligning values & investments
How do you motivate faith groups to actively drive impact through their investments? That was the question posed to FaithInvest's Director of Faith-consistent Mathew Jensen by Siddharth Chatterjee, host of AVPN Academy's Money Meets Mission podcast . Mathew's answer raised an issue that we have focused on a great deal at FaithInvest – the disconnect between a faith's teachings and activities, and what their money is doing. 'It's something we've termed the two-pocket problem,'
Susie Weldon
Survey finds 88% of Christians want investments to reflect values
Press release: 4 November 2024: A new survey has confirmed what FaithInvest already knew – that the vast majority of Christians who...
FaithInvest
FIIND report challenges investors to rethink poverty reduction strategies
The FIIND Impact Foundation's latest report, Can you help solve multidimensional poverty with your investment portfolio? , presents a...
Susie Weldon
UUA pushes back against accusation of ‘woke’ investing
The Unitarian Universalist Association has pushed back against the accusation that it – and dozens of other US investors, including...
Susie Weldon
Tighter reporting rules for gas & oil companies? Consultation closes Friday
The gangster Al Capone did not go to jail for all the people he massacred, but the US authorities got him in the end – for tax evasion....
Susie Weldon
Role of finance in transforming the world's food and farming systems
FaithInvest recently attended a two-day TABLE workshop on the politics and economics of food system transformation at Oxford University....
FaithInvest
Faith: The oldest currency in the world?
Our eyes were caught recently by a graphic produced by Visual Capitalist on the oldest currency still in use and trading today. The...
Trish Groves
An intense few days with the 'heirs of hope' in Northern Ireland
FaithInvest founding president Martin Palmer spent an 'intense' few days in Northern Ireland last week at a series of events focused on...
FaithInvest
Third round of our popular Faithful Finance training course starts Oct 29
FaithInvest launches the third round of its popular online course, Faithful Finance: An Introduction to Aligning Investments with Faith...
FaithInvest
Leading environmental campaigner Martin Palmer joins faiths in Northern Ireland on climate justice
F aithInvest Founding President and prominent environmental campaigner Martin Palmer will join faith-based organisations and civil...
FaithInvest
Dave Zellner: A pioneer in FCI and responsible investing
FaithInvest considers itself very fortunate that its Chair of Trustees, Dave Zellner, is taking on a more active role in the organisation...
Susie Weldon
Dave Zellner assumes leadership role as Executive Chair, launches capital campaign to fund major expansion
Press release: FaithInvest is delighted to announce that Dave Zellner, longtime Chief Investment Officer of Wespath Benefits...
Susie Weldon
Launch of the Collaboratorium for faith consistent investing
FaithInvest is delighted to announce a new resource for anyone interested in faith- and values-consistent investing. Since 2020, eight...
Trish Groves
Thinking Beyond an Apocalypse
A blog by FaithInvest Founding President Martin Palmer was featured today in Modern Church, a media outlet advocating 'for liberal...
FaithInvest
FaithInvest announces resignation of Dr Lorna Gold, pays tribute to her service & 'unwavering commitment'
FaithInvest is sorry to announce the departure of its interim CEO Dr Lorna Gold, who has decided to step down at the end of her period as...
FaithInvest
World Federation of Daoists takes a 'first step' onto the world stage
The World Federation of Daoists held its inaugural council meeting recently – and Martin Palmer was there to represent FaithInvest as...
Susie Weldon
Investing in reparations
You may have seen the news last week that the Church Commissions for England ’s Board of Governors, the organisation that administers the assets of the Church of England, released and adopted the 41 recommendations from an Oversight Group formed in mid-2023, to: '…advise the Board on how it establishes the new impact investment fund and grant funding programme that is being set up in response to its research findings of historic links to transatlantic chattel slavery'. The r
Mar 12, 2024
Impact funds must be lower returning ('concessionary') – wrong?
A recent opinion piece in Institutional Investor (II) by a Georgetown University Fellow and seed stage impact investor , in a tightly worded article, seeks to answer the question we often get: 'doesn’t impact investing necessarily deliver lower returns or lower risk-adjusted returns versus comparable private investments?' These authors find from their research… On average, impact funds actually outperformed their peers, with more than 50 percent of the funds we analyzed be
Feb 27, 2024
What faiths have authoritative guidance for their investments?
'Do (non-Catholic) faiths provide authoritative guidance for their investments?' We received this question recently in relation to comprehensive documents like Mensuram Bonam. Faith-Based Measures for Catholic Investors: A Starting Point and Call to Action and Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops , and had to answer: rarely. Or at least, not yet. There are interesting efforts in Islam to provide broad faith-based i
Feb 14, 2024
Impact funds: trends and insights
Phenix Capital is out with their 2024 Impact Fund Universe Report . It’s 32 pages packed with statistics, trends and insights on impact investing globally, and it has a couple of interesting findings this year. First the statistics from which their observations are drawn: since 2015 Phenix has tracked over 2,600 individual impact funds that have raised nearly €600 billion in assets, spanning private and public equity and debt (stocks & bonds), real estate, “real assets” (t
Feb 6, 2024
An update on Responsible Investing
Time for year-end tallying – and the numbers for responsible investment (RI) were up notably last year according to a new report out from LSEG , owners of numerous market data services such as FTSE Russell and Lipper. LSEG finds that total global assets in RI Funds stood at US$2.7 trillion at the end of 2023, up by 14% over the prior year-end. For comparison, the total value of the UK stock market is US$2.4 trillion. Equity (stock) funds still dominate the category at 60% of
Jan 30, 2024
ESG is dead: long live Rational Sustainability!
A new paper is out from London Business School on the needed evolution in ESG investing - and a proposal for a new approach - entitled Rational Sustainability . The author, LBS professor Alex Edmans , notes that we’ve all seen ‘ESG is under attack from all sides’ with multiple objections from opponents, including: ‘…[ESG] allows fund managers to pursue their own agendas at the expense of their clients’ returns’. '…[ESG] replaces clear-headed thinking by implying that it is
Jan 23, 2024
Top Ten FCI Research Posts of 2023
In 2023, FaithInvest provided you with weekly insights to a variety of research being conducted in the area of faith-consistent...
Jan 16, 2024
Does ‘engagement’ improve companies and returns?
Very interesting ‘real life’ study out 'Does Paying Passive Managers to Engage Improve ESG Performance?' , a 66-page working paper summarized here by Harvard Law School, looking at the impact of engagement activities (shareholder advocacy, etc.) on company ESG scores and subsequent performance – does engagement work? The authors, professors from Japan’s Waseda University, LBS and Brussels School of Economics, working with data from a ‘natural experiment’ of responsible inves
Jan 9, 2024
How COP28 was relevant for investors - if at all
ESG Investor is out with a sober and removed take on the outcomes of COP28 as relevant for us as investors and overseers of investment assets in an article, Take-off for the Net Zero Transition . Important to note that one of the main official tasks of COP 28 was to review and respond to the first Paris Agreement required ' Global Stocktake ' (a 45 page 'synthesis' of which can be found here ). The formal response contained a first-time key phrase, calling for the world to
Jan 2, 2024
Introducing a FIIND product design project
FaithInvest’s friend organisation FIIND Impact Foundation , an Amsterdam-based impact investing non-profit, is launching a grant-funded project to design and build a faith-consistent impact investing fund, and is seeking to assemble a group of faith-based asset owners (FBAOs) to help co-design it. As part of this, FIIND is seeking to address the challenges many FBAOs experience with impact investing: How to make the right investment decision from among the plethora of impact
Dec 20, 2023
When a sustainable investment underperforms
In aligning their investments with values, we often see faith-consistent investors including positive screening policies that target clean energy. However, this year’s performance of clean energy stocks may cause you to at least wince, and likely raise questions in your investment governance discussions. The S&P North America & Europe Clean Energy Index (a measure of the performance of 100 of the largest clean energy firms) has declined by nearly 26% year-to-date. The rece
Dec 20, 2023
Lessons on delivering social impact
Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the “big three” global consultants, is out with an interesting report on how banks can deliver both social outcomes and profitability. While it’s about banks, on reading it has lessons for any faith-based asset owner looking to engage in social outcome investing. First the authors note that ESG – and particularly the “S” (social) is good for banks, finding in their research… ‘… a link between institutions’ financial performance and the
Dec 12, 2023
Private equity for positive change AND competitive returns
A new paper from researchers at MIT and EBS Business school ' ESG Footprints in Private Equity Portfolios… ' looks at the relatively understudied area of responsible investing in private equity (PE), which is on the spectrum of impact investing, its implications for investment performance and the most effective methods. The results, in terms of impact on performance, are highly notable, and very helpful for you as investors. The authors follow 206 buyout funds (focused on own
Nov 28, 2023
Singing from the same hymnbook: consistent ESG terminology
We regularly hear, and express, concerns over the varying definitions of values investing terms, like screening, stewardship, or ESG investing, with a hope expressed that the industry can corral around a common set of meanings. Why? For example, you have screening criteria in your investment policy and guidelines that you wish your investment manager to employ – and of course they can do screening, but later you learn it’s not positive screening and it’s only done on a limite
Nov 14, 2023
Are social impact investments too risky?
Interesting paper out entitled ' A Note on the Role of Social Impact Investments.. ' in Highlights of Science , an academic open access publisher established in Barcelona, Spain. The paper addresses a comment we’ve heard from (faith-based) asset owners and impact managers: social impact investments (SIIs) can be too risky or provide too low a return for their risk. The six academic authors of this brief research paper appropriately consider the definition of ‘risk’ from a tot
Nov 7, 2023
Applying ‘integrated impact investment’ to align social and financial goals
Attending an in-person FCI or Impact event is nearly always an energizing and affirming experience, and in the post-COVID era these...
Nov 2, 2023
The 10 Myths of ESG
A rather direct essay by London Business School professor Alex Edmans - 'the 10 Myths of ESG' - appears in the latest Financial Analyst Journal (CFAs will find it in their in-box, others can obtain the document via this link ). The essay notes that 'pressure to do something…about ESG…can often lead to actions or statements that … apply ‘gut feel’ rather than being based on careful analysis'. Gut feel, in the author’s view, 'has led to many claims, and current practices, tha
Nov 1, 2023
An innovative approach to sustainable non-profit funding
In recent months, we’ve gotten to know the VOW Network, a organisation which is taking an innovative approach to funding the activities of non-profit organisations via investments - a topic of growing interest in the current ‘post-covid’ environment of reduced philanthropic giving, and a subject broadly in sync with our recent ‘grant alternatives’ event in London, Investing in a Liveable Future . The VOW Network, established in 2022 and based in India, is affiliated with the
Oct 24, 2023
Addressing climate AND social issues simultaneously - can it be done?
All of us doing faith-consistent investing are in some way addressing underlying environmental AND social issues, and we wonder – can we pursue both at the same time? With what tradeoffs? At what cost? Over what time-horizon? McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) out with a study From Poverty to Empowerment looking at concurrently 'addressing both poverty and climate change in a decisive way…' to understand what are the costs and tradeoffs involved. It’s a huge report at 136 p
Oct 18, 2023
Insights heard from a newcomer to faith-consistent investing
We had a wonderful opportunity to hear from a leader who is new to faith-consistent investing, with a faith-based asset owner, in this case a worldwide religious institution dedicated to education. The individual's learnings on FCI may resonate with you, as they did with us, relayed here mostly verbatim: Surprised that asset managers have such a seemingly outsized influence over how our assets are managed and what we are investing in. Asset managers need to understand that t
Oct 12, 2023
bottom of page