A customized investment portfolio that aligns your personal financial goals with your ethical beliefs.

 

What is Socially Responsible Investing?

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is an investment style that incorporates screening based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria into the portfolio construction process. These ESG based screens can be either negative or positive in nature.

Negative screens exclude companies that provide certain products and services that have a negative impact on society. For example,  filtering out companies involved in the following sectors:

- Alcohol

- Tobacco

- Gambling

- Weaponry

- Adult Entertainment

Positive screens typically select companies based on good overall or specific ESG practices (i.e. progressive on environmental policies, gender equality, some positive impact from a company's products and services (e.g. renewable energy, water treatment).

From an organizational perspective, research indicates that companies with strong ESG-related practices have lower risk, lower cost of capital, better operational performance and generally have better share price performance over the longer term. Approximately half of Canadians consider aspects of responsible investing as part of their investment decisions. Consequently, SRI has emerged as a viable investment approach for those Canadians who want to achieve competitive investment returns while ensuring that their money is managed in accordance with certain social and environmental values.

 

Is Socially Responsible Investing the right choice for you?

Choosing a SRI or ethical investment approach enables investors to choose investments that are consistent with both their financial goals and personal values.

Abbas Fazal is passionate about Ethical Investing and designs portfolios to meet the needs of investors who:

  • Believe that social responsibility should be a primary consideration in making investment decisions.
  • Want to invest in companies with attractive ESG practices based on the screening process.
  • Want to benefit from the investment expertise and research of RBC Wealth Management.
  • Want to invest all, or a portion of, their portfolio in a socially responsible investment solution.

 

Faith-Based Investing

Abbas also has knowledge of ethical faith based investing such as Halal Investing, which is a specialized form of socially responsible / ethical investing. Halal Investing shares many of the similarities of SRI / Ethical Investing, but it can also include additional screening, such as the filtering out of companies and sectors primarily involved in interest or that are highly levered (use too much debt to finance their business), or pork processing, for example.

For more information on how Abbas can help you achieve your financial goals with a customized Socially Responsible or faith based investment portfolio, please contact him directly at 905-738-0242 or at abbas.fazal@rbc.com.

Click here for more information on Halal Investing solutions.