We were delighted to be named joint winners of the Best Ethical Financial Adviser award at the recent Mindful Money awards. This is the second year we’ve been a winner, as we won the 2022 award. Director Mark Holtom was on hand to accept the award on behalf of the firm. Mindful Money is the country’s premier independent reviewer of the ethical investment area, and its awards across several areas help celebrate success, so it’s a real honour to have been recognised.
We are absolutely delighted to have been recognised by the judges for our contribution to making ethical investing more professional and more accessible.
While the ethical investment area continues to grow, there is still a lot of variation in what sound ethical investment means in practice. There remains, too, public concern over greenwashing and exaggerated claims around ethical investment.
The Mindful Money awards, which started in 2021, are intended to raise standards and recognise leaders and best practice – firms and people that “walk the talk”. The awards use independent judges with real expertise in the area.
Mindful Money’s founder Barry Coates believes the awards show real progress in higher standards, more choices for individual investors and scaled up positive impacts for the climate, environment and social issues.
The night’s biggest winner was fund manager Pathfinder Asset Management, winner of two awards, runner up in a third, and Pathfinder’s John Berry winner of a media award. Pathfinder’s funds feature in many of our portfolios and our KiwiSaver recommendations. You can watch our webinar with Pathfinder’s John Berry here.
The award categories showed where the ethical investing landscape is focusing. As well as the obvious, such as “Best Ethical Retail Investment Provider” and “Best Ethical KiwiSaver Fund Provider“, awards included the “Best Impact Investment Fund” and for the “Best Net Zero and Climate Action Investor”. The latter two reflect investors’ growing demand for funds that make a positive difference. We’ll write more in our next blog about these two exciting areas.
For a full list of the awards and the winners, go to Winners of the 2023 Mindful Money Awards – Mindful Money.
