Sustainable and Responsible Impact Investing with Jonathan Thomson, CFP, CSRIC

When thinking about how and where you are going to invest money, it may make sense for you to think about the causes that matter the most to you. There are ways to invest that will help you not only reach your personal financial goals, but will also align with your core beliefs. In today’s episode, host Liz Smith is joined in conversation with Jonathan Thomson, Certified Financial Planner with First Pacific Financial to talk about sustainable and responsible impact investing.

Jonathan belongs to a specialized team that focuses on ESG portfolios which stands for environmental, social, and corporate governance. By using the ethos ESG tool, Jonathan and his teammates can discover what causes clients care about most and use that information to build their ideal investment portfolio. There is a diminished faith in institutions on a whole right now and ESG investing is attractive to consumers because they are more likely to put their faith in individual companies. By getting people invested in companies that they really believe in, people are more likely to stick out the hard times in the market and stay invested for the long term.

Tune into this week’s episode of What’s Next to learn more about ESG portfolios and how to align your investments with your values in a way that is both sustainable and impactful.

Quotes

• “We'll use the ethos ESG tool to give us a little bit of insight into what types of causes clients really care about and might like to include more in their investment portfolios. At this time, we're not customizing every client's portfolio specifically for them, but this may be something that we're able to do in the future.” (27:46-28:09 | Jonathan)

• “Depending on the size of the portfolio, we have an additional layer which does allow for a little bit more customization that's called the resilient portfolio. And that's a collection of about 65 individual company stocks that are chosen for their resilience and for their sustainability long term.” (31:54-32:17 | Jonathan)

• “Part of the reason we believe so much in this ESG investing is because public faith in institutions is just at a low point. There's so much gridlock in the Senate, particularly right now. I would say that people are actually more loyal to individual companies.” (36:08-36:30 | Jonathan)

• “The best thing that our clients can do is just stay invested for the long term. So if we can get the best quality investments from the onset, and if we can identify those causes and those companies that they really believe in, that's going to help them stay invested during those difficult times.” (37:26-37:43 | Jonathan)

• “I would just say be bold. I think it takes a lot of courage to attempt something. I mean, obviously failure is okay, but I think it takes inner strength to even start the process of voluntarily undergoing a transition.” (1:01:45-1:02:05 | Jonathan)

Links:

Connect with Jonathan Thomson:

https://fp-financial.com/

https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/

For all of Liz Smith’s resources give her a like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lizsmithlaw

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