How far has faith-consistent investing come – and how much still remains to be done?
These questions were at the heart of an article that FaithInvest's Catherine Devitt and Dave Zellner wrote for GreenMoney's October eJournal which this month focuses on faiths and stewardship investing. The verdict from our writers? Faith-based institutions want their capital to reflect their values but more needs to be done to provide the support and infrastructure they need to implement this in practice.
FaithInvest's piece in GreenMoney journal is provocatively titled: 'Faith groups want their capital to reflect their beliefs. But does it?'
In the article, Catherine Devitt and Dave Zellner outline how far the faith-consistent investing (FCI) movement has come in recent years, explaining that in its early years, faith-based investing was mostly known for being about what faiths DIDN'T want to invest in.
That's no longer the case, they explain: 'Faith-based asset owners are no longer content to simply keep certain sectors out of their portfolios. They want their investment programmes to hold up under real scrutiny, to be able to demonstrate, not just assert, that their capital reflects what they believe.'
Yet FaithInvest's recent landmark study, Good Intentions 2026, which examined 275 faith-based investment policies, reveals how much there is still to go in turning conviction into a documented, verifiable investment practice.
'Most faith-based organisations can show they are financially responsible. Far fewer can show, in any rigorous sense, that their money is actually doing what their faith asks of it'
'Financial discipline scored consistently well across the sample, ' they write. 'But verification of faith alignment, the part that actually distinguishes faith-consistent investing from conventional ethical investing, was the weakest area almost everywhere.'
Just 11% of policies examined reached what our FCI framework calls a good foundation in FCI, and 39% scored at only a minimal level. Not a single policy in the sample reached the top band.
'In other words, most faith-based organisations can show they are financially responsible. Far fewer can show, in any rigorous sense, that their money is actually doing what their faith asks of it,' they say.
This could sound damning. But our writers add: 'This is not a story about bad intentions. It is a story about a young movement that has grown faster than the tools and standards needed to support it.'
'Faith-based investors are not short of conviction. They are short of infrastructure, of well-designed products, and of a shared standard for what it actually means to invest in line with one’s faith'
A recent report by investment tracking website Morningstar supports this assessment. It recently mapped the religious investment sector and identified 853 faith-based funds it identified worldwide, holding around $169 billion in assets, split across US, Middle Eastern, Asian and European markets.
Of these 853 funds, 650 were Shariah, 114 were nondenominational Christian, 87 were Catholic funds, and one was a Jewish fund,' the Morningstar report says.
Set against a global population of well over four billion people who identify with the two largest faith traditions covered in the report (Christianity and Islam) alone, it is a fraction of what the market could bear.
'Faith-based investors are not short of conviction. They are short of infrastructure, of well-designed products, and of a shared standard for what it actually means to invest in line with one’s faith,' Devitt and Zellner write in the GreenMoney article. Or in other words, they lack 'the connective tissue' that enables conviction to be put into practice.
We're actively building some of that connective tissue with our new FCI Centre of Excellence – due to launch later this year. In the meantime, please do check out GreenMoney Journal for our analysis of how far the FCI movement has come and where it needs to go next.
And thank you, GreenMoney, for giving us the space to discuss these issues in depth.
