Some of the most valuable discussions that we have with our clients are about their ethical preferences.  We have developed our own fact find, based around the Mindful Money identified 'nasties' - see the example to the left.

We ask our clients to score on a scale of 1, 2 or 3.  1 means that they are comfortable with their exposure. 2 means that they would prefer not to have an exposure and 3 indicates no exposure if possible.  Even some of our die hard 'I'm not interested in ethical investing' choose 3 for Human Rights and Environmental Violations.

We record these for each person and either average the scores for joint investments, or get a score from the client for their joint or trust investments.  This leads in to the type of investment portfolio that is appropriate for them, whether it be not ethical (base - but not offered to new clients), Hybrid or fully ethical.

These categories will be updated and clients scores refreshed when Mindful Money changes categories - which happened in mid 2023.  

Our clients are asked (in our Steps to Take Now) to check their scores, and a number of clients are increasing their scores, showing their lower tolerance for unethical processes as they learn more.

The yellow highlighted cells are the ones that changed from the previous 10 categories, where we averaged the scores, and we are asking clients to check whether this new score reflects their views.