Hi Nell,

Thanks for your question, I just wanted to share my thoughts (as a Pearler co-founder).

There are some nice clear explanations from our investor community in this thread about how you can explore ESG (environment, social, governance rated) or what are sometimes referred to as ethical investment options, including ETFs. You’ll also find we have a wide range of blogs, pods and info on how to research for these – you can also use filters when searching our ASX or US shares accounts too (simply type ethical into our search bar or see some of the filters you can find here https://pearler.com/explore/invest/shares).

At Pearler we don’t suggest investments but we try to be the best platform for people who want transparency and clarity over their portfolios, and to invest simply for the long-term – this brings me to Pearler.

We are a small private business in reality, and also in the context of the industry. We are independent and run by a small team of founders and committed young Aussies, working hard every day to offer something helpful and valuable to everyday Australians. This may seem like buzz words or generic corporate-speak, but it’s not.

We don’t try to market ourselves as anything other than committed to empowering investors to find the right investments to suit them, without falling into typical industry traps like short-term trading, speculating on stocks. There are some apps that market themselves as exclusively ethical or impact, who will try to pick things to suit their definition of ethical etc – we think that suits some people, but it’s just not us. To be transparent, you may like to research such apps just to ensure you’ve considered all your options!

Our view, for what it’s worth, is that ethical will mean something different to almost everyone – so, within our mission to empower investors, we just want to help you define it for yourself, and invest to suit. The beauty o

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Hi Nell :)

Pearler is not an investment company or a bank – it’s a broker. It reinvests any of its surplus revenues/profits (far as I know) back into the company to roll out more features and functionality to customers, aiming to get more customers in the process.

Think of Pearler as a giant supermarket where you can buy shares in any company or ETF you like. Pearler simply helps facilitate this process by handling the buys + sells and letting you automate your saving/investing etc. So you get to decide exactly where your money goes, and you then own the shares and funds you’re investing in, not Pearler.

Hope that helps.

Dave

With Pearler you get to choose the investments, pearler is the facilitator for you buying the investments. Pearler is acting as the share broker, and can automate your saving, investing and re-balancing.
There are ETFs that specifically filter out unethical companies (according to different criteria). So some filters may exclude sin stocks e.g. alcohol and gambling, others not. So you have some work to do.
ESG (environmental, social and governance) is the over-arching term. ESG is forcing companies to re-structure. Woolworths spun off their liquor, gambling and hotels into Endeavour group and with it the sin stocks. BHP used to have oil and gas, but they made an arrangement with Woodside pertoleum to take those and make itself pure with respect to fossil fuels.
Pearler have a section in their learning pages on ethical investing.
https://pearler.com/explore/learn