Are IFAs missing a major opportunity by failing to engage with socially responsible investing?
COP15, the United Nations Climate Change conference that took place in Copenhagen last week, has served to highlight the environmental issues that challenge the world’s governments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre Budget Report, likewise, raised issues of environmental and ethical importance and saw the Government pledge £400m to boost support of green growth and the development of low-carbon technologies over the next two years. These high profile initiatives will have helped spotlight the role investment can play in progressing a cleaner environment and a more ethical approach to life in the mind of investors. Ethical investment has suffered in the past from a rather unwieldy approach that revolved around taking hard-line ‘dark green’ views, alongside often lacklustre performance from retail investment funds, hampered by restrictions on what they could and could not invest in. While investors’ attention has now been drawn to how they can help tackle the world’s environment prob
