The demand for impact investing products is growing, but many independent financial advisors do not utilize them for their clients. To bridge this gap, Envestnet (NYSE: ENV) has teamed up with Investopedia to create the new "Impact Investing Hub," which provides advisors and investors with educational content and actionable insights they need to begin meaningful conversations about impact investing.
"Impact investing strategies have the potential to enhance clients' investment outcomes while aligning their portfolios with their values, but a lack of awareness and education has prevented many advisors from taking the first step toward incorporating impact strategies into portfolios," said James Lumberg, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Envestnet.
"The Impact Investing Hub combines Envestnet's investment expertise—and partnerships with managers, advisors, and impact leaders—with Investopedia's unique educational voice, empowering advisors and investors across the country with actionable intelligence to begin, and maintain, meaningful conversations about impact investing."
In addition to written and video commentary from impact investing experts at Envestnet | PMC, the Portfolio Management Consultants group of Envestnet, and other industry sources, the Impact Investing Hub gathers the latest news articles about impact investing and provides a glossary of industry terms and answers to frequently asked questions. To learn more about the Impact Investing Hub, please visit https://www.investopedia.com/impact-investing/.
"'Impact investing' was one of the top 10 searched terms on Investopedia in 2017, indicating user interest is growing substantially," said Caleb Silver, Editor-in-Chief of Investopedia.
"As a result, we've ramped up our content production and partnered with Envestnet to provide advisors and investors alike with educational and actionable content around impact investing."
Approximately 84% of Millennial investors and 76 percent of women investors have expressed interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impact products, according to the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, but Cerulli Associates has reported that 56 percent of all advisors—and 57 percent of independent RIAs—do not utilize impact offerings in their practices. The Impact Investing Hub's Advisor Education and Investor Education sections offer content to help advisors and investors start the conversation around impact investing.
The portal's content, updated on a biweekly basis, can provide intelligence and analysis that can keep the conversation going.
"The Impact Investing Hub is a natural outgrowth of our mission to harness innovation and technology to show advisors and investors how much more empowering their investment portfolios can be when they are aligned with their values," said Pamela Fennell Jacobs, Executive Managing Director of Impact Investing at Envestnet. "We will continue to partner with industry leaders to build innovative and educational tools to demonstrate the power of impact-driven strategies. Education is always the first step in the process of helping advisors add value to their engagement with clients."
Envestnet | PMC's series of Quantitative Portfolios (QPs) include impact-driven portfolios offered through passively managed separately managed account (SMA) vehicles.
The firm launched a gender-focused impact QP, the Gender Equity Large Cap Core Portfolio, which seeks to offer competitive returns by investing in companies that are leaders in fostering gender diversity and inclusion, in September 2017. More information about PMC's impact-driven portfolios is available at http://www.investpmc.com/impact.
