Sustainable investing tool for advisers seeks seed funding

Sydney-based fintech entrepreneur Tom Culver has announced the launch of a sustainable investing solution for financial advisers, investment brokers and accountants called Ethic Adviser, which is now in the process of raising seed round funding of $1 million.

Mr Culver, who had previously founded Goodments, a tool that matches investors to shares based on sustainability values, said he saw an opportunity to equip advisers with specialist sustainable investing tools and information.

“With the acceleration of consumers wanting sustainable investing solutions (number one expectation from clients of advisers and 20 per cent of clients today actively looking), advisers have been left desperately underserved by their industry,” says Culver.

“They are stuck between clients wanting sustainable options, and product providers delivering sometimes questionable products, rather than accurate and reliable information or support for advisers to provide advice to their clients.”

Mr Culver added that a seed funding round would help the company optimise the product experience, increase sales in Australia and expand to new markets.

“Ethic Adviser is raising $1 million to support the next 12 months of operations and scale and have a clear path along proven metrics to very strong ARR within 12 months,” he said.

Ethic Adviser has partnered with Count Financial to offer access and product training to Count members, as well as ongoing education around sustainable investing.

Simon Jeffery-Bilich, head of practice development and research at Count Financial, said: “We’ve seen huge shifts in client preferences for sustainable and responsible investing, which has accelerated in recent times.

“Increasingly, clients will be quite specific around the sectors in which they do not want to invest, often for very personal reasons. We’ve found this aspect is often time-consuming for advisers. For this reason, the Ethic Adviser platform is a great enabler for advisers to proactively understand client preferences, get insight on investment options, and deliver great client outcomes.”

“I think the time will come [when] sustainable and responsible investing becomes the norm. The Ethic Adviser platform helps advisers get in front of this conversation with their clients and add value to both clients and their firm.”