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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.
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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
Church of Sweden: a good example of faith-aligned reporting
We’ve talked about reporting for faith-consistent investing, it’s part of our FCI Scoring, but with only 46% of faith investment policies and guidelines referencing any type of faith-aligned reporting requirement, and most faith asset owners hesitant to publicly release this information, good examples are hard to find. Fortunately one good example we cite recently released their annual “sustainable investments” report - Svenska Kyrkan – The Church of Sweden. It’s publicly
Jun 15, 2023
Why ESG needs to be redefined as a process
In our previous posts on ESG , we have explored how the quality of ESG data can be very noisy and how it would benefit from regulatory changes. This week, a working paper from Harvard Business School explores how ESG has changed from being a useful process to a product. When ESG is viewed as a process (in its original design), it aims to measure the relevant resources that a firm uses and what salient outcomes come from said inputs. The framework is designed to analyse the
Jun 8, 2023
How much does Artificial Intelligence know about faith-consistent investing?
With the widespread and free release of various artificial intelligence powered “chatbots” – formally generative pre-trained transformer language models – like ChatGPT , we wondered if these tools could be helpful to our work in faith-consistent investing. If you’ve not yet experienced a chatbot, this Harvard IdeaCast may help convince you to at least try it, as “something clearly is big here.” FaithInvest co-founder Mike Even wanted to see if ChatGPT could help with the pr
Jun 7, 2023
Encouraging signs for clean energy investment in 2023
There were encouraging signs for clean energy investment in the International Energy Agency’s recently published World Energy Investment Report 2023 . The Report provides an updated look at the current state of investment in the energy sector with a particular focus on the growth of clean energy investment compared to fossil fuels. Some key highlights: Clean energy investment has overtaken fossil fuel spending at a ratio of 1.7:1. The amount of investment in clean energy per
May 31, 2023
Investing with impact in the endowment space
Friend organization Impact Investing Institute out with Investing with impact in the endowment: Why do it and how to get started . Finally, a HOW TO piece… Note, the Impact Investing Institute uses the GIIN definition of impact which covers private and public investing : 'investments made with an explicit intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return'. First, their extended case for impact in summary (after a leg
May 24, 2023
Faith-based asset owners: concerns over voting policies of largest asset managers
The UK Asset Owner Roundtable (which includes Scottish Widows and the Church of England Pensions Board) has raised concerns around the voting records of large asset managers. Large asset managers are perceived to be putting short-term interests above the long-term interests of asset owners and the economy. The Brunel Pension Partnership (a UK local government pension pool of £35Bn) has invited the roundtable to convene with the largest asset owners to “support constructive
May 23, 2023
Six Pitfalls to Avoid When Mobilizing for Sustainability – or FCI!
You’ve made the decision to pursue faith-consistent investing, or are on a path to do more, and possibly today you’re hitting roadblocks. A recent article by global consultant Boston Consulting Group summarizes the most common roadblocks in ' Six Pitfalls to Avoid When Mobilizing for Sustainability '. It's short, punchy and maybe somewhat obvious to some of you. But what struck me …. … replace the word "Sustainability" with "Faith-Consistent Investing" and it's relevant to t
May 17, 2023
Net-Zero Asset Managers Continue to Invest in Oil & Gas
In a previous post , we discussed the Net-Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) Initiative, which highlighted the necessary changes required from the global economy to transition away from Oil & Gas and various commitments to achieve this. How are the managers doing? A report from Carbon Tracker finds that despite this commitment and position statement , the 25 members of the NZAM Initiative continue to invest in Oil & Gas, with the largest NZAM members ‘heavily invested in unaligned o
May 11, 2023
Responsible Investing – no dent in demand, but more work to do
We hear questions from US-based organizations on the politicization of ESG – is it deterring new responsible investing? I’m purposefully blending the two terms – 'ESG' and 'Responsible' (one could toss in 'Sustainable' too!) – as we’ve seen some in the asset management industry lately shift ('re-shift?') to the latter phrase, given perceived issues with the former among some audiences. Recent data from Morgan Stanley suggests interest is not abating, but the US and Asia rema
May 9, 2023
Faith values run deep, does ESG?
Despite overall religiosity decreasing in the UK (according to Census data), there is an emergence of new faith-based investments and approaches to achieve faith-consistent goals. A good example of this is the Edinburgh finance declaration , released back in 2018 by the Global Ethical Finance Initiative (GEFI), an interfaith shared-values framework on ethical finance, between the Church of Scotland and the Islamic Finance Council UK. While intricacies and nuances abound betwe
May 4, 2023
Impact bonds: new report provides insights
In our report, Impact Investing Roadmap , we defined impact investing broadly as investments that '… add to the sum total of ways that environmental and social benefits are currently being generated.' We acknowledged that this type of investing ' generally requires fresh capital' a nd in this fresh capital bucket, we placed 'green bonds' – more broadly defined as Impact Bonds. In their recent report “ Innovation in Impact Bonds ”, global asset manager Nuveen gives a solid ov
May 1, 2023
Exploring the complexities and nuances of ESG ratings
Much has been made of ESG ratings recently, from critiques across the U.S. political spectrum to The Economist advocating that ESG adoption should be dropped in favour of directly assessing environmental impacts or simply measuring CO2 emissions. Research from MIT Sloan’s Sustainability Initiative would suggest that there is ‘signal within the noise’ and that abandoning ESG altogether because of ratings challenges would be akin to ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater.’
Apr 27, 2023
Finances at the local faith organisation level
We often talk pensions, endowments, foundations, and other larger, liquid and longer-term assets of faiths. But some of you also work with local houses of worship, and many of us are involved with finances at our local houses of worship, and therefore see first hand the effects of long-term faith-consistent investing. How do these local faith organisations view their own financial situation? A recent study “Pastors’ Views on Church Finances“ by US-based Lifeway Research as
Apr 27, 2023
Summarising Mercer's new, global non-profit investment survey
Investment consultant Mercer out with results from their global non-profit investment survey (which includes faith-based asset owners among the 133 respondents from 20 countries). At almost 50 pages it’s a lot, but helpfully summarized to a few points here , and in a chaptered podcast on this same page–they’re worth a reflection. Notably, Mercer finds: Widespread ESG adoption with 83% of respondents currently or planning to incorporate 'ESG into investment decisions.' Of th
Apr 17, 2023
Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance Publishes Position on Oil & Gas Sector
A UN-convened position statement from the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA) highlights the necessary changes required in the global economy to transition from Oil & Gas to more renewable sources of energy. The position is expressed in the form of the expectations and actions required from investors, companies, and policymakers to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions are aligned with 1.5°C targets (limits to global temperature increase). Kudos to our friend Ryan McQeeney
Apr 13, 2023
Headlines from three faith-based asset owners
I finally replayed the Sustainable Investing Landscape and Strategies event hosted recently by Church Pension Group (CPG) in the US, which invests on behalf of clergy and employees of The Episcopal Church. Many of you have met or heard Chris Rowe from CPG at FaithInvest and other forums, also included were Bhakti Mirchandani of Trinity Church Wall Street , and Anne Richardson of Episcopal Church Foundation , along with respected ESG manager Boston Common Asset Management .
Apr 11, 2023
The Trade-Off Between Sustainable Investment & Fiduciary Responsibility
Research published in the Oxford Academic Capital Markets Journal suggests that the likelihood of achieving significant change in carbon emissions in the real economy by ‘investing in line with net zero’ (a key objective of the Net-Zero Asset Managers Initiative) is unlikely, due to the trade-off between investment risk and fiduciary responsibilities. While most sustainable investment strategies, such as the adoption of ESG factors, are likely to yield small differences in i
Apr 5, 2023
Who uses OCIOs?
In our recent paper focusing on smaller faith-based asset owners , and my session at the CIIC event in Chicago, we highlighted three solutions to help asset owners pursue faith-consistent investing: Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO), Investments Consultants (sometimes both exist in the same organization), and Consortiums and Networks. A recent institutional investor survey by the endowments and foundations team at global money manager Blackrock shows that OCIO use
Apr 4, 2023
Faith-consistency isn’t just about investable assets
Faith-consistency isn’t just about investable assets, it can be about all a faith organization’s assets. We talk frequently about the “path” of faith-consistent investing, and some organisations are far down the path – more fully integrating their faith values into their investments and more, while others are eyeing an entry to the path and wondering about the journey. It’s often helpful, therefore, to observe what others are doing: recently the Church of England announced
Mar 31, 2023
New survey of climate change considerations in institutional portfolios
According to a recent survey * 71% of institutional (faith) investors claim that “climate change is at the centre of, or is a significant factor in” their investment policy – we see this in the work we do with many of you, and in the research we’ve done on investment policies. Further, some of you have made or are considering a net-zero by 2050 portfolio commitment: 37% in Europe, just 19% in North America. BUT how are you pursuing a net-zero portfolio? What’s involved? Dutch
Mar 27, 2023
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