ESG Investing: Maximizing Returns While Making a Positive Impact

Bryce: [00:00:26] Welcome to another episode of Get Started Investing in this podcast, we cover all the basics you need to start your investing journey. Are you joining us for the very first time? Is this the very start of your investing journey? Well, before you dive into this episode with us, our feed is designed to go from the very beginning, so we strongly recommend that you scroll up and start from episode one. However, if you are feeling brave and just want to dive in, then of course, don't let us stop you here at Jaci, we unpack all the jargon and the confusing bits. We hear your investing stories with the goal of making investing less intimidating, and we want to have a good time along the way. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How are you going? 

Alec: [00:01:09] I'm very good. Bryce I'm pumped for this episode. Third part of our ethical investing series, but I must say I'm also a little intimidated. Yes, you have pulled out the company credit card and gone wild on the Sony store, I guess, or 30. So Ted Wells UNsponsored, but given the amount of that you bought, maybe it should have been sponsored. I am surrounded by cameras, tripods. You even bought one of those big floodlights. Look, if you want to watch us on YouTube, if you want to see our faces jump over there because the amount Bryce has spent on this stuff, yeah, I need some ROI. 

Bryce: [00:01:54] Can we caveat that there's a lot of gear and not a lot of idea? 

Alec: [00:01:58] It's going to be it's going to be. Take a while for us to get up to 

Bryce: [00:02:01] We've got the podcast down pat. But when it comes to video, yeah, a bit of learning to do. I thought we'd start big and see what happens. 

Alec: [00:02:06] Oh, you started big offices here. 

Bryce: [00:02:10] So you're right, Ren. We do have our YouTube. It is something that we don't often push, but head across there. We've got a lot of content on there from our Ausbiz TV show, a bunch of old episodes. We haven't been able to get to video due to lockdown and Covid, and we're stoked to be able to get back in the studio and get some cameras up and running. So that's enough on that. Tho Ren you did mention at the top that we're here to close out our three part series on ESG investing, and that's what we're going to do today and really have a conversation about what it means to actually invest ethically and what the options are. We've spoken about the how in the why. Well, more about the why. 

Alec: [00:02:49] Let's recap the first two episodes in case people have just jumped in or are finding us on YouTube and have no idea where we're at, right? Sure. 

Bryce: [00:02:58] Unfortunately, we don't have the first two videos. 

Alec: [00:03:00] We do have the one. We do have the one. So first episode in this ethical investing series, we covered the debate around ethical investing, why people choose to invest ethically, what that actually means. And then also, there's a number of detractors when it comes to ethical investing, and there's a lot of people that argue it's more a marketing gimmick and an excuse for higher fees. So we Covid that debate, shared our views. And then in the second episode, we got down into the nitty gritty and we actually asked the question What is ethical investing? Because it's in the eye of the beholder, it can mean different things to different people, and there's a number of factors to consider. And I think the important thing underlying it all is that there is no perfect company. No, that every company that you think is ethical or unethical exists on a spectrum. And you know, the job of us as investors or as ethical fund managers out there is to decide where they draw that line, how they balance different priorities. And so that's what we chatted about on the last episode. And in this one, we're going to say, look, if you're putting this in the too hard basket, you don't have to make those decisions yourself because there's a whole world of ethical fund managers that you can give your money to. So we're going to cover how you need to approach that. What are some of the considerations and then what are some of your options in today's episode? 

Bryce: [00:04:21] Yeah. So just to recap as well, we have put some links in our show notes from last week and spoke to some experts around finding information. And if you want to do it yourself, you know some really good resources. Mary Manning. We had Emily O'Neill as well and Adam, so I'll share some of their great resources. But as you said, Ren, this one is all about really backing the professionals with your money, and there's nothing wrong with that. We say we say this on the show a lot. There are advantages in giving your money to the pros and in ASG, it's certainly a consideration. 

Alec: [00:04:52] Not only is there nothing wrong with it. Most countries around the world, you have to do that if you have a pension system, if you have a superannuation account in Australia, a 401k in America, if you know a pension in Europe or in Canada, chances are you have money parked with fund managers. Yeah. And in a lot of countries around the world, you have some choice over which fund managers you park your money with. And so if ethical investing is something that's important to you, that's a good vehicle to park some money with ethical managers. 

Bryce: [00:05:24] So Ren, let's start at the top and it if you're thinking about where to park your money and who to go with. Two sort of approaches that you can take. The first is the divestment approach. The second is the engagement approach. 

Alec: [00:05:38] Yeah. Big debate in the fund manager community at the moment. And there's a right answer here, and that's a recurring theme in these three episodes that I hope people don't leave.

Bryce: [00:05:48] this feeling like there's no right answer. So I'm not going engage. 

Alec: [00:05:52] Yeah, I hope so as well. Yeah, because I don't know why. But yeah, so the let's let's start with what they mean, because there's a lot of ethical funds out there, and their answer to this question will dictate what they actually are investing in and then how they manage those investments and they engage with the companies. So divestment is you don't own any companies with ethical concerns. You sell them so you steer clear of them. You know, if if there's a tobacco company, if there's a casino or a coal mine, you just say, not for me, I'm not going to put my money with you. And basically, they're excluded from the investing world that hurts the company in a number of ways. You know, they they have less buyers for their shares, so the share price might fall. They have less institutions and funds that are willing to participate in like capital raises and give them money to to grow the business, to lend them money and buy their bonds. So divestment is one approach which basically says we're going to exclude these companies until they become more ethical or more sustainable in our eyes. 

Bryce: [00:07:00] All right. So that's divestment. What about the engagement side of things? What's the difference between that approach versus the I don't want to own any companies that are not ethical?

Alec: [00:07:10] Yeah. So engagement is the other approach, which is I am happy to own some of these companies that are not ethical in my eyes, but I'm going to be active in engaging with the company and advocating for change. 

Bryce: [00:07:24] That's a much more activist approach in some way.

Alec: [00:07:27] Yeah, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:07:28] Tough to do. 

Alec: [00:07:29] Very tough, especially if you're a minority shareholder. Like if you earn points, six percent of the share register, it's like, is that how much is the company going to listen to your concern? On the other hand, if you're a vanguard or a BlackRock, you know some of those, you know, multitrillion dollar asset managers and you own twenty five percent of a company. Well, the company is going to listen to you. 

Bryce: [00:07:54] They're really going to listen to it. Yeah. So then as a retail investor, and if you're thinking about who to put your money with, is there sort of a more right approach with this sort of stuff? It sounds quite difficult and daunting to say. I want to take an engagement approach because as you said, you need to be pretty significant shareholder to actually enforce a lot of change. But you also, on the other hand, might not want to be investing in. 

Alec: [00:08:18] Yes. Yeah. And don't get me wrong, you don't need to be a significant shareholder, but if you are a small shareholder, you need to be a consensus builder. You need to be able to convince other shareholders to join you in whatever you're advocating for. Look, there's no right approach. There's just different approaches and different fund managers can make very compelling cases for both. You know, the divestment one is sort of more intuitive if you don't think it's ethical, you don't owner. And the company is incentivised to change because they want to get more shareholders on their register. And the classic example of that is what Woolworths just did by selling their gaming and liquor business. There are a whole bunch of global pension funds sitting on the sidelines telling Woolworths, We want to invest in your shares. You're a great supermarket business. You pay a strong dividend, your business we want to own, but we can't because we have ethical concerns about your pubs and gaming business. You've got exposed to poker machines. You're funny. So we won't invest in you and broadband cheat. The Woolworths CEO heard those concerns and responded to those concerns and said, We're going to change. We're getting rid of that. And now all these global pension funds can invest in Woolworths. So that's a case study of how divestment works. Engagement is I don't have a claim, I don't have a clean example, do you? 

Bryce: [00:09:43] The only thing I can think of when it comes to engagement, and I'm sure we'll touch on some of these fund managers later, but there's a few specific funds who will write to companies and act on behalf of all the shareholders. Well, all of the investors in their fund and sort of advocate for change or, you know, say that we're no longer going to invest in you unless you address these concerns. 

Alec: [00:10:03] You've hit a point there, which is the divestment and engagement idea can live on a spectrum like a lot of companies will engage. And then if a company doesn't change, they'll say it was selling and we're getting out. It's just yet. Whether they're really in in the first place is the question. The reason this is important is because you might end up owning shares in companies that you don't want to own. There might be a fund manager that's been engaging with BHP and convincing them to sell their oil business, oil and gas business, which they recently have. But you might have owned BHP shares for a number of years, but you might not be comfortable with that. BHP have got rid of the oil and gas business they are moving to, I guess, more future economy mining. But you know, you've got to be aware of where your fund manager sits because that will dictate what companies they own. I want to close this with an idea that I've had. And it's been an idea that I am so surprised that no one's doing. I think BlackRock are getting there, but there's all these big index ETF providers, you know, like an ASX 200 index, S&P 500 index, Nasdaq 100 index and all the big ETF providers have these like super vanilla low, say, index funds. BlackRock have iShares BetaShares Vanguard. They're commodities selected exactly the same index product that just got a different stock market ticker. When we decide between them, we look at face they're a commodity, so it's like, how can I get it for the lowest cost? I reckon one of the 88 providers needs to come out and say, we're going to offer a vanilla index ETF, an ASX 200 ETF, but we're going to be super active in pushing climate and sustainability concerns with every company in that because we're going to be big shareholders on the register. So don't go to any of the other index providers that offer exactly the same product. You're getting the same product with us, but we're going to make ruckus in boardrooms. We're going to hold CEOs feet to the fire and we're going to advocate for change. Whereas all these other index providers just a sort of neutral. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, I'll be like, Look, I'm willing to pay two basis points more in phase because if I say that you guys are making a difference, it's 

Bryce: [00:12:20] a good idea. I guess you'd want to see some different sites, a lot of a lot of work on the end of the the provider to hit up all 200 and actively make some changes. But hey, I feel like that's where the what the world of investing is going anyway. They all eventually going to 

Alec: [00:12:34] have to, you know what? Also, it would be a lot of work, but cleaning up after climate change? Absolutely. Yeah.

Bryce: [00:12:42] Well, if you're out there and you're an ETF provider and you're listening to this, there's an idea. 

Alec: [00:12:46] Yeah, happy to be a consultant. 

Bryce: [00:12:50] So I think the first thing Ren is when you're looking to put your money somewhere to invest ethically, you really want to have an idea of their investing philosophy. You want to make sure that they're incredibly clear on what their mandate is, what they are including and what they are excluding within the ETF or within within their fund. 

Alec: [00:13:11] In my mind, there's sort of three and there's obviously a number of subsets, but there's sort of three broad categories that you might say does like narrow ESG, which ESG funds that you just exclude, like tobacco weapons, gambling, that sort of traditional stuff. Then there's like climate focussed ESG, which is, you know, they're really focussed on oil and gas and coal miners and companies that are emissions heavy and stuff like that. And then we have broader ESG funds that are worried about everything from governance, social considerations, animal testing, resource use a lot broader than some of the more narrow ESG or climate ESG funds. And within that, there's a number of different subsets. But I think the important thing is every fund will have their own take on what's included and what's excluded and how they make that decision. And if you're going to put your money with one of them, make sure you know what their take on that is. 

Bryce: [00:14:08] Yeah, and we spoke rate, I think, on Equity Mates and had a look at some of the ESG funds and some of them are incredibly concentrated. And then if you look at perhaps one of the Vanguard ones, for example, which had, I think, over a thousand companies in it and had a sustainable or ESG in the title. So there's an example of taking the broad approach. 

Alec: [00:14:30] We got a bit of hype from that episode. We did, we did. 

Bryce: [00:14:34] But then that's just an example. If you go to know and you know, Vanguard obviously has. The their mandate and philosophy and around building that index compared to a manager or an ETF that has 30 stocks. 

Alec: [00:14:46] And in terms of how you can do that, so every fund manager on their website will try and make that as clear as possible. If it's an ETF like the Vanguard one, you can actually go onto their website and download every holding. And that's what we did for a couple of the ethical ETFs that we talked about in that episode. Also, if the fund managers are doing YouTube videos or podcasts or webinars and stuff like listen to them, listen to how they approach this topic. When we spoke to Adam there.We in last week's episode for this ESG series, he made a good point that I think it's worth repeating here. Sometimes the wording that fund managers use is really important. So he made the point around coal. So he's the CEO and co-founder of Future Super, and they are hard. We exclude all coal. No coal. Just know coal. Pretty simple. But he made the point that there's a number of ESG funds out there that say they exclude thermal coal, which means that, you know, there's still a lot of coal that could be included in that investing portfolio. 

Bryce: [00:15:56] Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, but it can be very misleading if you're or if you don't actually have a look and be careful with what they're saying and you take a stance that you think that investing in no coal at all. Yeah, you might find that you're investing in companies that, yeah, they're not in thermal coal, but 

Alec: [00:16:14] they're in coal. There's nothing wrong with that because as we keep saying throughout this episode, there's no right or wrong answer. But it's just if it's important to you, make sure that it's you're investing in what's important to you. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:16:26] So another thing to consider Ren when backing the professionals or looking to put money into some funds is how they go about their research. So there are a number of funds that we've had on the show before, who have in-house research teams who are actively going out there and making their own sort of recommendations and considerations around companies and whether they meet their own criteria for ESG and sustainability. And then there are other ways in which these funds and managers can go out and buy third party research or just track pre-made indexes that are sustainable or ESG. So if it's important to you that the company and you're backing the manager to make those decisions, as I said, there are companies who have that in-house approach versus taking on third party or index. 

Alec: [00:17:13] Yeah. And I think the thing here is if they're taking research from a third party or an index provider, just know how that third party approaches astray or how that index provider builds the index. Because really, then that's the important consideration. Not so much what the fund manager is saying if the fund manager is just following an index or others research. 

Bryce: [00:17:36] Yeah, yeah. So another factor to consider Ren is the screening approach that these managers of professionals take. We have spoken about this on the show before, and it's to do with how they create a universe of stocks. Yeah. So one approach is a positive screen, and that's where they are looking for companies who are doing the best in class in ESG. So environmental, social governance, they're looking for companies who are actively doing something to better climate change. They're looking for ways to put companies into their universe, whereas a negative approach is where they say we are not going to take any companies engaged in particular activities. We're going to exclude all those and then any remaining companies are in our universe to invest.

Alec: [00:18:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Negative scoring is if you're in gambling, you're out. Yeah. Similar to what we spoke about with divestment before, it's clean. It's simple, it's easy. I don't care what you do over here. I don't care what you're trying to do better over there. If you've got a poker machine, you're not touching. Your positive screen is a little bit more. There's a little bit of art as well to the science. And it's, you know, are they improving? Are they an industry leader? Are they, you know, innovating? And you can find companies that are perhaps wouldn't meet that negative screen? Maybe they do have some exposure to fossil fuels or they do have some exposure to gambling, but they are leading the industry in changing or they're inventing new technologies to move away from that or they're on the process of getting rid of those, those assets or those parts of their business and stuff like that. So positive screen, I guess, is more about change or finding leaders in an industry, whereas negative screen is just simple. You're in it. We're not touching you. Come back and talk to us when you're out. 

Bryce: [00:19:23] And just like all managers, when you're putting money in, you need to consider their approach to, I guess, active passive, how they're managing the portfolio. Are they going to be index tracking? Are they going to be rebalancing, I think, to be taking an active approach, all those things. Pretty straightforward to find information on. 

Alec: [00:19:40] Now I know we've given a big shopping list of things, and all of that is on top of just the normal investing due diligence that that you should be doing. What's the fund's objective? What benchmark are they trying to beat? What's their investing philosophy? What are they investing in? Is the manager a good manager? Do they have a lot of experience? It can be overwhelming. I am almost overwhelmed just going through that list, and I think the key thing is go at the very least, go to the fund managers website, read about how they invest and how they approach ethical investing, and make sure that it aligns with what you're comfortable with. 

Bryce: [00:20:20] To Ren. And that brings us to the point where we get into the fun part and the nitty gritty and talk about what our investing options are and give some very clear examples. But before we do that, we'll just take a quick break. So we have a list of options here, Ren, we've got the passive approach that you can take, we've got a bit around ethical bonds, we've got a bit around some active approaches that you can take. And of course, we can't close this out without talking about superannuation. Super super important. This list is by no means exhaustive. There's plenty of options out there, but one of our good friends, Owen, has kind of pulled together some great options for us. 

Alec: [00:21:00] Yeah, Owen Raskowicz of Rask Australia. He has built a website Best ETFs dot com that are you. If you go there, he has a landing page. List of ethical ETFs is by no means complete, but hopefully own. This is the kick that you need to complete it. But it's a good list and it it can give you an idea of all of your investing options. Importantly, this part of the episode is going to be very Australian focussed, but if you are listening from overseas, all of the principles are relevant. All of these products that we're talking about listed in Australia have equivalents overseas. If you're from the UK or the US, you actually have a heap. More options must be nice. So I think the principles of you've got passive options, you've got actively managed options and then you have retirement account options are the same. They'll just have different ticket codes and potentially different companies issuing them, although these days a lot of the companies is the same as well. 

Bryce: [00:22:00] Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. All right. Well, let's start with the passive approach, and there's mostly the ETFs here, Ren. 

Alec: [00:22:08] And so when we're talking about passive, these products that track an index that's provided generally by someone else, yeah. And every quarter. So every three months or every six months, maybe every year in the index will change and these ETFs will change in accordance with the index. But other than that, they're not really making a lot of active decisions. Yeah, some of them will have a like an ethical management committee on a betashares do with features super for some of their products, and they'll they'll, I guess, put their two cents on top of what they see coming out of an index. And they'll say, you know, they've made some famous decisions over time. They made the decision to exclude Tesla a couple of years ago. They made the decision to exclude Facebook a few years before that. But really, that's the extent of it. These are ones are passive, and they're just going to follow an index. 

Bryce: [00:23:01] And just a reminder that you must go and check out the fund provider's websites to get further information on those indexes and the approach that they take. So Ren, let's start with betashares. You mentioned that there some of the more popular ones they global sustainability leaders. The ticker is very popular in the Equity Mates community, Australian sustainability leaders, the ticker is fair and their Climate Change Innovation ETF, the ticker is ERTH.. 

Alec: [00:23:28] The ticker codes that ETF providers are getting these days. If we move to VanEck, they're similar. They have a Australian Sustainable Equity Ticker Code and GRMV and then an international sustainable equity ESGI. So similar to betashares, they have an Australian one and an international one. Then they also have a more concentrated clean energy ETF than at Clean Energy, ticker CLNE. 

Bryce: [00:23:57] A vanguard, one of the well, they the pioneer of the ETFs. They have Vanguard Ethically Conscious International Shares Index. The ticker on the ASX is VESG. 

Alec: [00:24:11] I iShares, which is BlackRock, have as Australian ESG leaders iESG. State Street, have an ASX 200 ESG, so they take the ASX 200 and put a bit of an ESG tilt, and that ticker is E200. And then there's other ETF providers as well. Russell have an Australian responsible investment from memory. Do your own research, obviously, but I'm pretty sure it's focussed on high dividend yields in the ethical space and that ticker is all right. All right, 

Bryce: [00:24:44] so I'm interested with the ASX 200 ESG, the SPDR and Ren, if you know how to actually get that 200 like actually, they can't say all companies in the ASX 200 have some sort of ESG sustainable lens. Or are they saying that? 

Alec: [00:25:00] No, no, no. It's not. They take six two hundred and then they either exclude some or they underweight them. Yeah, interesting. So if you're excluding them, Australians love a mining stock. 

Bryce: [00:25:11] Yeah, that's what I mean. And yeah, and banking and all sorts of things of interesting how they what approach they taken. So you are actually getting the index, it's just weighted differently. 

Alec: [00:25:19] Yeah. No, not to call out own again. But I actually did come across this one on Owen's best ETFs website. A lot of incomplete information on this one will Ren. 

Bryce: [00:25:30] Let's move to ethical bonds, something that a lot of the community. May not have heard of, 

Alec: [00:25:35] yeah, let's get through this quickly because, you know, bonds. But there are if you in the same way that companies have stressed that you can invest in, a lot of these companies issue debt through bonds that you can invest in. And if you want to invest in companies that are ESG focussed, you can invest in their bonds as well. Vanguard have an ethically conscious global bond index. VHF High Beta BetaShares have an ethical, diversified bond ETF being day, you know, lower growth, but you'll get some consistent dividends from the bond yield and you know, it'll exclude bonds in companies that don't make the ethical screens. 

Bryce: [00:26:16] So turning towards managed funds that are, you know, have fund managers actively managing their portfolio. Couple that have listed funds available, one that we've had on the show a couple of times is Invest Better Future Fund. We had the portfolio manager last week, Emily O'Neill. The ASX ticker is I am P Q.

Alec: [00:26:36] Yeah, that one wins a lot of while it does. So this isn't us putting our two cents in, but objectively Canstar and you know, with Zenith and all of them seem to like it. 

Bryce: [00:26:46] So and they have their in-house research team, they do

Alec: [00:26:49] doing that

Bryce: [00:26:50] sort of stuff. And then there's as we said, this is not an exhaustive list, but another one to consider might be they invest. I sorry, they invest smart, ethical share funds. The ASX ticker is in ASX. 

Alec: [00:27:01] Yeah, and we should expect a lot more to come tomorrow. Like the the active ETF space, those managed funds in an ETF product wrapper is one of the fastest growing areas of the market, and that's going to grow. That list is going to grow and watch out for it because there might be some fund managers to tickle your fancy. Yes. 

Bryce: [00:27:23] Merryn, we did do a big series on superannuation with Super Hero, and you can't go past speaking about ESG without considering the impacts that you can have. Three Super Fund and the options that are now becoming available and have been for a while with ESG and Super. 

Alec: [00:27:43] Yeah, and this is on a number of levels. So everything that we've spoken about about ethical investing is relevant for super because, you know, there are massive pools of money. They have a lot of they own a lot of shares and a lot of these big Australian companies and more and more international companies as well, and they can throw their weight around so. So that's number one. But number two, super funds also invest off the stock market. And, you know, super funds have been some of the biggest drivers of renewable energy investment and the like in Australia. So superannuation is where you can really make your dollar go further if you want to invest ethically because super funds have the balance sheet, the power and the time to to really make a difference. 

Bryce: [00:28:29] Okay, so we know that they can make a difference. They can do something about it. What can I do about it as someone with super? 

Alec: [00:28:37] Yeah. Well, we can decide where we put our SIPP, who invests super for us. Yeah. So for me, there's two ways to think about super. There are there are businesses like fund management businesses that are all in on ethical investing and then the traditional super businesses that have traditional super products, but then also have an ASG fund that you can invest in. Of doing some research on this and trying to get a list of the latter of, you know, super funds that invest traditionally but haven't ESG Fund and the long and the short of it is basically every super fund today has an extra option rookies 

Bryce: [00:29:13] if they don't 

Alec: [00:29:14] tell you honestly. Yeah. And I think the important thing there is you've got to look about what their philosophy is when they're investing ethically. They might not be investing in renewable energy infrastructure and stuff like that in the same way that some of the full all in ESG fund managers are. But they might be because renewable energy is a pretty good yield play like a pretty good pay these days for a lot of these super funds. When I was in the sustainability business back in an old life, super funds were the ones pouring money into that space because they were desperate for consistent, sustainable yield and return on their investments and energy infrastructure was a good place. So have a look at that. But I think the two that we want to talk about are the two full ESG funds. So one of the oldest in the space, Australian ethical. 

Bryce: [00:30:02] Yeah, massive and future super is one of the younger in the space been around for a number of years now. We've had Adam Vermeij, who's the co-founder and managing director, as we said at the top of the show he was on last week, and we've interviewed him a couple of times on Equity Mates investing podcast. You've actually like a bit of detail around how they approach their positive screens and their negative screens and all those sorts of things, and they're very active and in terms of activism, actually writing to companies and asking for change and. Getting them to respond to particular requests. They're doing a great job in the space, so that's future super and Australian Ethical Super are both ASG full ESG funds. 

Alec: [00:30:44] And we're not saying that future is better than Australia. No, not because we've had Adam Fairway on a number of times. We're just saying he's a really good bloke because he keeps agreeing to give us his time. Australian ethical appeals come out. Come on. 

Bryce: [00:30:59] So look, if you do want to compare, I guess, super funds when it comes to this, there's a great comparison table. It's WW W market forces dot org dot you slash super funds. 

Alec: [00:31:09] The irony of that is Bryce is Afterpay Bryce. Everyone else is like no one reads out, you know, as well as soon as I started writing like, damn at Ren School. It will also include this in the show notes. So if you just want to click a link rather than backtrack and listen to Bryce, read that URL again. But market forces is a great resource. They do a lot of work in the climate space looking at companies, the sort of, I guess, a watchdog. I guess you'd call it a, yeah, an independent voice in the space. But they have looked at every super fund and looked at their climate commitments. Now when we're prepping for this episode, I was talking to Bryce and then Darcy, who works with us as well. We looked at both of your super funds on this comparison table. What was the result? 

Bryce: [00:32:02] Well, I take a different approach with my super, but that it was I still remember it wasn't great. 

Alec: [00:32:08] It wasn't great. Yeah, yeah. It got crosses across the board. I was plus get together. Yeah, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:32:15] But look, Ren. That does bring us to the end of our episode, but we've we've covered a lot of ground in this and I know that there's probably you can kind of often feel a bit overwhelming. So I'd probably suggest listening to this a couple of times because we did we did have a lot of information in there. But I think over the main message that we want to carry through here is there is no right or wrong approach to this stuff. We just really encourage you guys to be as active and engaged as possible. Do your own research. There's plenty of information out there, including the resources from our experts from last week. Head to the pages of any of the fund managers or ETFs that you're looking to invest in. I feel like it's only going to get easier this space. There's no doubt it's a bit clouded and grey at the moment, but we're all heading in the right direction. 

Alec: [00:32:58] Yeah. Let me finish with three key takeaways from the episode and a final thought, which is, first of all, your money can make a difference and we're saying the effect of ethical investing in the space. We've got two examples throughout it, but it is having an impact. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that if you want to invest ethically yourself, you can and there are resources out there, but it can be difficult. And there's a lot of information that can be hard to get for the everyday investor, but it's still a worthwhile endeavour doing. And then the third thing is, if you do find it so hard, you can buck the professionals. There's plenty of information on the fund managers out there. They're all trying to sell themselves. There's a whole bunch of independent websites and, you know, organisations that are reviewing them. So there's plenty of information out there. If you want it back to professionals. But a final thought and I think the most important thing to take away from all of this. If you're feeling overwhelmed, if you feel like this is something that you wanted to, but it's too hard. Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good, said it. The difference is here we're talking about like, these funds can be different, but still they're all, you know, heading in the right direction. They're all generally focussed on similar things and trying to make change and approach the markets with an ethical lens. And you know, whether the first choice you make is the perfect choice, I think isn't the right question. I think, you know, you've got plenty of time as an investor to work this stuff out. It is something that's important to you, find something that you think works. And if you decide that it doesn't work and you need to change, you can. But yeah, don't let perfection be the enemy of the good here. Don't put it in the too hard basket and don't get started if this is important to you. 

Bryce: [00:34:48] Well, I'm going to leave it there, Ren. It's been a lot of fun over the last three episodes. We do really hope that it's helped you in your ESG journey. If you'd like to hit us up, you can head to Contact@equitymates.com. Go and join our discussion group on Facebook if you're not the Equity Mates Investing Discussion Group. Join the conversation there. We're on all of the socials as well, but otherwise make sure you buy our book Get Started Investing feed if you would like more info on broader topics around starting your investing journey. So thanks for being with us over the last three episodes. We're super pumped to continue these series until the end of the year, but Ren will pick it out next week. 

Alec: [00:35:26] Sounds good!