A NEW international commitment to creating “a centre of excellence in faith-consistent investing” was made at the conclusion of the first Faith in the Common Good forum, in Paris, on 19 April.
Convened by the non-profit organisation FaithInvest, it brought together “33 faith traditions from four major religions” to agree ethical-finance investment criteria and a strategy for the future.
The president of the Vatican Bank, Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, said: “Fundamentally, this notion of creating an ecosystem for faith investment is extremely important to allow faiths to align their investment decisions to the faith that they proclaim. Behind all of this is the start of building a significant alliance of value-driven, faith-based investors, co-ordinating action at scale for the common good through financial markets.
“When we invest as a Catholic investor, one of the things that we miss the most is the absence of an ecosystem. There is no Catholic financial ecosystem. In fact, there is no Christian financial ecosystem . . . our brother Muslims, and also brothers from the Jewish tradition, are telling us that they feel a little bit the same.”
Delegates at the event estimated their networks and organisations to have control or $US8-10 trillion of assets under management. Most of those funds, about $6 trillion, are attributed to Islamic finance sources, which one source described as “the big beast in the room”. Financing from sources denoted as Christian is estimated at between $1 trillion and $1.75 trillion.
CCLA, based in the UK, was the forum’s “launch patron”. It has about £14 billion of funds under management and derives from the establishment in 1958 of the Church of England Investment Fund. CCLA manages funds on behalf of some 11,000 PCCs, diocesan boards of finance, cathedral Chapters, and other C of E charities. It was sold to Jupiter Asset Management last year for £100 million.
“Collectively owning trillions in assets around the world, faith investors wield enormous might when it comes to values-aligned investing. As the pioneers of ethical investment, faith investors are continuing to push for the development of policies and best practices to ensure their investments are consistent with their values,” the head of sustainability at CCLA, Dr James Corah, said.
“We have moved beyond just deploying negative screening to embracing positive engagement. This forum was an opportunity to further explore how investors can work together, and with their investment managers, to not only push companies to make the changes faith investors want to see but, importantly, also to ensure that investment managers are equipped to serve faith institutions with innovative, tailored investment choices, so that together we can build a better world.”
Mr de Franssu explained that the new centre of excellence “ecosystem” will entail the creation of a network for faith-based investors to find mutual support, share best practice, engage in informed dialogue, and to agree a rationale for ethical investment decisions.
FaithInvest’s executive chair, Dave Zellner, presented new research at the forum. “While many faith-based organisations demonstrate a clear commitment to investing in line with their values, most fall into a ‘basic effort’ tier when it comes to their investment policies,” he said.
“Across the dataset, policies are generally more developed in avoiding harm than in proactively deploying capital toward mission-aligned outcomes — yet positive impact is what faiths tell us they want to achieve with their investments.”
The centre of excellence, he said, “will gather examples of best practice, share information about investment opportunities aligned with faith values, signpost what’s already available, and enable faith groups to find opportunities to pool their resources to achieve the common good they seek”.