Long gone are the days of investing solely for the bottom line. A growing percentage of investors want to put their hard-earned money behind organizations that align with their personal values. Some want to move away from a one-size fits all basket of blue-chip stocks, for one that supports initiatives that actually matter to them. While some may strictly invest in this manner as an outward expression of their values, others believe this is a winning formula for people and the planet.

Are the supply chains ethically developed? Do the employees receive fair compensation? What is the background of C-Suite executives and the board of directors? When investors base financial decisions on these factors, it is known as ESG investing. ESG Investing is a strategy that takes into account the Environmental, Social, and Governance factors of an organization. How a company affects the environment, how it treats its employees and communities, and how leadership governs the organization all contribute to a company’s ESG profile. But from a financial standpoint, are these initiatives really worth the hype?

In this episode, Malcolm Ethridge sits down with Daniel Naim, founder and CEO of Fennel, an ESG investing platform created to empower retail investors with the knowledge required to advance the “engaged shareholder movement”. Daniel shares how after beginning his own personal investing journey, he observed the ways in which traditional investment platform models fail to encourage the alignment of customer and company values. Daniel shares the key ESG metrics he believes investors should pay attention to, as well his personal mission to promote shareholder activism across the industry.

Daniel Naim discusses: 

• The importance of voting your shares as an investor
• How to look underneath the hood and find a company’s true social and environmental impact
• Ways that retail investors can come together to help force companies to become more environmentally conscious
• The lesser known dangers of payment for order flow and securities lending

Connect With Daniel:

• LinkedIn: Daniel Naim
• Get Fennel

Connect With Malcolm Ethridge:

• The Tech Money Podcast 
• LinkedIn: Malcolm Ethridge
• Connect with Malcolm 
• @MalcolmOnMoney

About Our Guest:

Daniel Naim is a physics PhD who grew up in Beirut Lebanon and went to university at Berkeley. He is intent on making the world a better place.He also developed an anti-neutrino detector that could be used to measure the plutonium production of nuclear reactors from over 100 miles away. This detector simultaneously pushed the frontier of dark matter detection in the WIMP candidate space by over 3 orders of magnitude.