Align Your Money with Your Life
To us, Responsible Investing (RI) is about aligning your money with your values and managing risk to achieve your financial objectives. When it comes to our investment strategy and process, Responsible Investing is about considering how companies interact with people, make decisions, and impact the planet, and integrating that information into the process of selecting and managing your investments. It is also about knowing you, our clients. Each investor has their own, custom Responsible Investing objectives. It is our job to understand yours so that for our clients, investing responsibly leads to achieving financial peace of mind.
Understanding Responsible Investing – a Framework
Responsible investing can be thought of as a spectrum, ranging from integrating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations to better manage risk at one end, to pure impact investing at the other, which seeks to influence direct positive change by targeting investments to particular companies and industries.
Responsible Investing can also be approached as if choosing from a menu: Whereby apart from including ESG integration and impact objectives, your portfolio can also take account of values based screening and active engagement, including voting of share proxies. And, you can do all this either excluding fossil fuels or allowing fossil fuels-based investments.
Environment, Social and Governance Integration (ESG) Read about how ESG integration can manage risk here.
Engagement Read about how engagement can lever the power of money for change here.
ESG and Values Based Exclusion Read about how to avoid investing in certain companies and industries here.
Impact Investing Read about how your investments can make an impact in areas you care about here.
Investors can choose to participate anywhere on the RI spectrum, at any level of risk or safety; diversifying broadly or focusing specifically on particular issues; divesting entirely of fossil fuels, or instead focusing on influencing change from the inside as owners though engagement. Our team is here to lead you through a process to build your customized Responsible Investment Policy.
Our RI Process
Getting to Know Your RI Policy
When you sit down for the first time with a LeRoy Wealth Management Group Advisor, we will first try to get to know you better: Your financial needs, aspirations and future goals. But more than that, we work to get to know your values to help you determine if socially responsible investing will be a good fit for your financial future. Are you a passionate climate activist in your day-to-day life? Or does the idea of investing in a women’s leadership fund get you excited about your investments? Or are you simply interested in considering non-traditional ESG factors in order to build a portfolio with better risk adjusted returns?
Whatever your interests and values we are here to help you work out your priorities when it comes to responsible investing. And, we will help you determine the best way to implement your customized responsible investment policy in a manner suitable to your time horizon and risk profile.
Impact Reviews
We keep you up to date on the kinds of impacts your investments are having. If your RI policy involves engagement strategies, your money is always hard at work making the world a better place and as part of your periodic review process we walk you through that impact.
Ongoing Due Diligence
Our team continually researches the responsible investment industry landscape to ensure that we are making available to our clients the most relevant and effective Responsible Investing strategies and investment solutions.
As Responsible Investing has continued to increase in popularity, we have seen a rise in greenwashing. Greenwashing is where companies will market themselves as responsible or sustainable when in fact, they do little to nothing in the way of effective screening or engagement to enact what they suggest in advertising.
In order to stay ahead of attempted greenwashing and ensure we are bringing our clients solutions that are effective and aligned with your values, we maintain an extensive and on-going due diligence process. Our team regularly meets with responsible investment industry leaders, corporate heads of ESG, portfolio managers and analysts, attends responsible investment focused conferences and industry forums and conducts independent research.
All of our team’s wealth advisors are certified Responsible Investment Specialists. Our Senior Wealth Advisor Sonia LeRoy has been awarded Responsible Investing Advisor of the Year by Canadian Wealth Professional Awards twice and been nominated multiple times.
Responsible Investing Resources
Apart from the work we do for our clients our team is committed to raising awareness about Responsible Investing the industry. Some of our initiatives include our newsletters, social media, podcast appearances, and other public speaking.
As an award-winning Responsible Investing Specialist, our senior wealth advisor Sonia LeRoy has been invited to participate on a number of Responsible Investing panels. To learn more about Responsible Investing and how our investing choices have power to influence positive change beyond our own personal finances, we invite you to take a listen to Sonia:
Turning The Page Podcast Episode 24: Sustainable Investing with Sonia LeRoy
Investing with Purpose: Sustainable & Responsible Investing
Wealth Professionals 2021 Panel on The Rise of Responsible Investing: What's in Store for 2021 and Beyond
To facilitate deeper understanding of the responsible investing landscape, and some of the different ways in which responsible investors can focus their influence and invest in alignment with personal values, we have curated a selection of material from a variety of investment firms who offer responsible investment solutions. LeRoy Wealth Management Group and IPC Securities are in no way recommending any of the companies portrayed here, or any particular investment solution. These materials are for educational purposes only. Each investor’s needs and objectives are unique, and our recommendations are only ever offered after obtaining a thorough understanding of your situation, objectives, risk profile and values. Past results are never a guarantee of future returns.
Sustainable Investing for Young Investors
How to Spot a True SRI Fund
The ABCs of ESG
Understanding Responsible Investment
Climate Change: Active Stewardship vs. Divestment
How to Spot a True SRI Fund
The Growing Rewards of Being a Responsible investor from AGF
Our Team in Print:
Why sustainable funds’ near-term challenges shouldn’t shake ESG believers (Nov 17, 2022)
Has abundance of choice led to ESG confusion? (Oct 17, 2022)
How stockbroker grandma lit advisor’s passion with Irwin Toy shares (June 13, 2022)
WP Awards 2022 feature profile (2022)
2022 5-Star Leading Women in Wealth (Nov, 2022)
Financial Success for Women by Women (chapter 15: Responsible Investing: Align Your Money with Your Values)
Facts and Myths about Socially Responsible Investing
MYTH: Responsible investing requires a higher risk profile.
FACT: Responsible investing is often used as a risk mitigation strategy
MYTH: Responsible investing requires higher fees.
FACT: Fees vary across the spectrum of mutual funds but just because a fund is responsible investing focused does not mean the management fees will be higher. Read more here about how Responsible investing doesn’t mean lower returns.
MYTH: Sustainable investing has to be fossil fuel free.
FACT: While many sustainable investment funds screen out fossil fuels, others take a best-in class approach and choose to engage fossil fuel companies to drive change towards best practices and sustainability.
MYTH: Responsible investing is ethical investing.
FACT: Not necessarily but it can be, depending on whether a values-based exclusion approach is adopted.
MYTH: Rating agencies track whether investments are responsible or not.
FACT: There is no standardization amongst rating agencies. Each has a different methodology. It is important to understand ratings methodologies as well as the nuanced objectives of the investments you are considering.
MYTH: Responsible investing doesn’t apply you me if all I care about is maximizing my risk adjusted returns.
FACT: If you care about risk and return you would be a prime candidate for responsible investing. ESG integration is widely recognized as an effective risk management tool that can lead to improved risk adjusted returns.
Start a conversation with our team now to build your
Responsible Investment Policy
Sonia LeRoy is the co-author of Financial Success for Women by Women, published in the spring of 2020. Her chapter, titled Responsible Investing: Align Your Money with Your Values, reviews the responsible investing landscape, Why to invest responsibly, and how to do so in a manner that supports one's own values while leveraging one's power as an investor to make the world a better place. To enquire how to purchase a copy of the book please contact us.
- The content of this book has not been reviewed by, nor does it have a direct relation to, Investment Planning Counsel. The material is general in nature and should not be construed as investment advice, nor should it be relied upon when making investment decisions. Products and services mentioned are for informational purposes only. No offer is being made in any jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful.