What to expect from your advisors – and how to check it's working: Our FCI Forum on Thurs 3 Sept
- Catherine Devitt
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Our FCI Forum on Thursday 3 September takes a close look at the relationship between faith organisations and their professional advisors and fund managers, writes Catherine Devitt. What should you expect from them, and how often do you check it's working?
Most faith organisations rely on external advisers and fund managers to look after their investments. That is entirely reasonable, but it raises a question that is easily overlooked: have those professionals been asked to work in a way that reflects your faith commitments, or only to deliver a financial return?
Thursday 03 September
10.00 ET | 15.00 BST | 16.00 CET
And once the money is invested, does anyone check that what your policy promises is what is actually happening? Investment policies also have a tendency to be written once and then left alone, even as the concerns of the tradition, and of the world it invests in, continue to move on.
How do you check that what your policy promises is actually happening? And how often is your policy reviewed?
Our landmark study, Good Intentions 2026 looked closely at all three of these questions and found a consistent pattern among the 275 faith-based policies it assessed: strong financial discipline sitting alongside much weaker verification of faith alignment.
Join report authors Catherine Devitt and Dave Zellner for our fourth deep dive into Good Intentions 2026 in our FCI Forum on Thursday 3rd September, as they discuss these issues and offer advice for how to strengthen these areas. The forum will explore what stronger practice looks like across the last three of the ten criteria in our FCI Assessment Framework:
Professional guidance: Whether advisers and asset managers are explicitly required to put faith commitments into practice or are left to infer them.
Regular review and monitoring: Whether anyone checks, over time, that investments still match what the policy says.
Continuous improvement: Whether the policy develops as circumstances change or is signed once and filed.
Participants will leave with a clearer sense of what to expect from the professionals they appoint, practical ways to build a values check into the reporting they already receive, and a simple approach to keeping their investment policy current as circumstances change.
