Podcast: Continuous Disclosure: Does Ethical Investing Pay?

Is investing ethically preventing you from generating decent returns? How do you know if a company is not just doing greenwashing by making false environmental promises?

This week, the New Zealand Herald launched the first in a new podcast series called Continuous Disclosure, where senior journalists from our sales team chat with an expert on topics affecting the investment world.

After the COP26 discussions in Glasgow, Money editor Tamsyn Parker talks to Robbie Urquhart, senior portfolio manager at Fisher Funds, to find out if these discussions are really important and how investment managers are using them. decisions they make to define their investment choices.

Ethical investing is an area of ​​growing interest for Kiwi investors, but it can also be a minefield to match your ethics with how a business operates and how investment managers treat those businesses.

Urquhart says that one of the most frequently asked questions about this is whether ethical investing is keeping you from making decent returns.

Ethical investing is not just about the environment. Social and governance factors, such as whether a business is involved in modern slave labor or human rights abuses, are also issues for investors to consider.

Starting at the end of the month, the newly appointed KiwiSaver default funds will also have to exclude fossil fuel investments under a government mandate, a move that is expected to spill over to the industry.

Urquhart also shares his advice for those who just want to get started with ethical investing and how consumers can tell if a company or investment manager is simply greenwashing.

Continuous disclosure is available at iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes come out every other Wednesday.

You can find more New Zealand Herald podcasts at nzherald.co.nz/podcasts Or on iHeartRadio.