Spread the love

Ethical investment platform Goodments and its female Co-Founder Emily Taylor have identified a gap in the Australian investment market with an active group of Aussie millennial investors keen to invest in environmental and ethical stocks not being catered for.

Millennials are the most active groups of investors on the Goodments platform, with nearly 5,000 customers saying their main focus area is the environment when investing. Research from the Responsible Investing Association Australia (RIAA) supports this, finding a clear disparity between what ethical investors care about and what funds managers are providing.

Goodments is the only fintech in Australia with a platform of its kind, carving the way for ethical investing with its world-first sustainable investment platform matching people to shares and funds based on environmental, social and ethical values.

Co-Founder of Goodments Emily Taylor says she plans to give a voice to a whole group of keen, informed, savvy investors who are being ignored by the finance industry.

“Millennials want to invest their money into companies and businesses they see have potential not just to make money but have an impact for the greater good,” she says.

“While getting a return on your investment is important to investors on our platform, what we see most is their ethical conscience leads their investment decisions. With more than 90% focused on environmental impact and long term effects on the world as the main determining factors to invest,” she said.

“There’s a whole population that the financial sector are ignoring by not presenting them with ethical investment options. Millennials have a strong desire to cause positive change, they see investing in a company as a way of empowering that company to take action in the sectors they operate in,” says Taylor.

Data from a cross-section of Goodments investors aged 18 to 75 revealed investors place significant importance on local and global issues such as human rights and animal welfare but these are trumped by the need to secure our climate future.

The average age of Goodments customers is 29, aligning with its millennial focus. The platform is weighted almost equally between women and men with the most active investor (by money invested) a woman.

Since launching in 2017, Goodments investments have led to 114, 414 tonnes of carbon emissions saved, 52,030 non renewable electricity savings and 32,090 tonnes of waste recycled. The most popular industries that investors have turned away from tobacco, animal testing, predatory lending, fossil fuels, fur and leather products.

A recent poll of investments by Goodments identified the most traded companies on the platform are STMicroelectronics NV, Tesla Inc and Beyond Meat Inc. The most-traded funds on Goodments are Invesco Solar ETF, VanEck Vectors Green Bond ETF and Invesco Cleantech ETF.

A recent report by Greenpeace identified Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo as the top polluting companies. The rest of the companies rounding out the top 10 polluters are Mondelēz International, Unilever, Mars, P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Phillip Morris, and Perfetti Van Melle.