Fund managers, Mindful Money look for ways forward

Members of Boutique Investment Group (BIG), a forum for New Zealand’s non-bank fund managers, and Mindful Money CEO Barry Coates came together to discuss the “vexing question” of how to provide investors with “good information about how their money is being used from an ethical perspective.”

Mindful Money, a charity that makes the information available to the public as a free service, uses a set of criteria to rate how “mindful” funds are. However there has been some frustration in the industry that Mindful Money’s ‘companies of concern’ net is being cast too wide in some cases and there is no mitigating information made available to retail customers.

In a joint statement BIG chair and Nikko AM general counsel Simon Haines and Coates say surveys show that New Zealanders want to know where their funds are invested. But this is not the whole story.

“There is plenty of room for different actors with different perspectives to misunderstand each other. We don't have a common vocabulary. There are no accepted standards for disclosure. We approach issues of concern in different ways (and we all think our way is the right way), and we often have different views on whether a particular activity crosses into being a matter of public concern or not.