 We're here to talk to you about democratizing impact investing, one financial advisor at a time. My name is Christina Landhoved, I'm one of the managing partners of Tideline, a specialized impact investment consulting firm and I'll be moderating this incredible panel on a really important topic. So just to kick it off, I'm going to give a few brief intros, we don't spend too much time on bios, but first I'd like to say we're all here I think because we believe in impact investing at some deep level in our souls, but it's a market I think we are all aware it's dogged by perceptions of elitism, perceptions that it's reserved for a few ultra high net worth individuals or the institutions that have been created to serve them. So in that context democratizing access to impact investing is truly an urgent priority for our market and I think we spend a lot of time talking about access to capital amongst entrepreneurs who need it the most. Here we're talking about access from a different angle, access to impact investment product from your everyday households, individuals across the world and the country who really want to see their capital being invested in responsible impactful ways. We have an incredible lineup here, first with, all the way on my left, Jackie Vanderberg who's managing director and head of sustainable impact investing at Bank of America's Global Wealth and Investment Management group, Jamie Martin who's representing the other big platform in our country, Morgan Stanley executive director of the Global Sustainable Finance Group also across the wealth and institutional investment management businesses, Rahana Natu who runs Spectrum Impact, a boutique consulting firm but has many years of experience in this market both from the Rockefeller Foundation, B&Y Mellon and other parts and Josh Levin who's the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Open Invest, a venture-based public benefit corporation bringing wealth management solutions to the market and Adam Connaker from the Rockefeller Foundation who's running the innovative finance strategy and zero-gap portfolio and deeply involved in helping to seed some of the solutions that this market needs so with that I'd love to get started and I'm going to start by just asking each of you to give a few brief introductory remarks what concretely are your institutions and you personally doing to help democratize access to impact investing so Jackie you want to start yeah thanks Christina and great to see everybody if you want to get I guess really specific wealth management for Bank of America you'll know as Merrill Edge, Merrill Lynch and what was formerly known as US Trust is now known as the private bank at Bank of America so that's the broad spectrum that we're talking about in and if we think about those advisors there that's about 16,000 and clients who you know range from the person who walks into a Bank of America branch office with the first ten thousand dollars that she saved beyond her retirement account is trying to to make an impact with that investment all the way up and through institutions and so if you specifically what are we doing it's about training those advisors in different ways and how to talk about this how to think about it it's about access to product on the platform and specific portfolios and then putting those pieces together and we can get into that a little more great thanks Jamie yes thanks hi everyone Jamie Martin for Morgan Stanley so I say in the global sustainable finance group at Morgan Stanley we actually sit at the firm level working across our capital markets business our asset management business and our wealth management business really building the intelligence center inside Morgan Stanley and all things sustainable and impact investing and really partner with the various businesses to bring sustainable investing solutions available for our clients whether they're large institutional clients or our families or individuals or through our large wealth management business so yeah here today very much here with the wealth management hat on at the end of the day similar to Jackie I mean we are a an intermediary we play a matchmaking role and increasingly you know our clients are signaling their interest in sustainable and impact investments across public and private markets so a big part of our job is really being the scout team or the radar for innovative strategies that are coming to market that have the capacity to be able to scale through our broad distribution pipes and clearly spending a lot of time on not only the product and solutions but the education to enable advisors to feel empowered to have these types of conversations it's got some new tools to help with that which I'll get into as well but yeah it's been a very interesting perspective obviously this is a space that's moving incredibly fast trying to stay on top of it is a as a full-time job but we're seeing the demand coming from all sides of our organization now which is exciting great awesome thank you hi everyone my name is Rahana I run a strategic advisory company called spectrum impact we focus specifically on building impact investing strategies so our work in this big messy ecosystem is really about getting investors suppliers of capital slightly further along the education curve and better partners to many of the folks that are here on the stage and so we mostly use strategy why do impact investing how does it look to allow those folks to think about impact investing as a framework that serves its core mission not the other way around and we do that through an education process and so we have the great pleasure I think of watching fund managers corporations public and private companies move across their education journey in the hopes that they can sort of be better purveyors of capital and use it more effectively so I'm Joshua Levin I'm from open invest I was thinking about if this is the conference of patient capital to some degree we are the inpatient ones so we are dedicated using technology to mainstream values based investing and we happily use inpatient capital to do that we want to see this move fast we believe that we need technology to achieve a step change in this space and so what we do we're about 25 people were based in San Francisco it's a combination of ESG folks like me and hedge fund engineers and technologists we build technology to disrupt ETFs and mutual funds we think that's what stands in the way and so our software skips funds and manufacturers buys up underlying securities that would be in your portfolio and then streams those strategies directly up to advisor workstations and to client interfaces so that people can deeply customize around their values so they can have impact reporting so they engage in shareholder resolutions and do all the things that the traditional highly intermediated asset management supply chain is standing in the way of and Adam Connaker I'll take the last spot I want to step back for just a quick second to say I mean from the foundation perspective we don't have the built-in investment clients we don't have that same perspective so when we get involved a lot of the perspective we're taking is sort of how to foster and grow the the field of impact investment more broadly and for us a big step in that path is not just to give you know individual and retail investors access but to really inspire them and get them excited about what we're doing in this space because I think ultimately we want them to challenge the fundamentals of what finance is and can do and they're only going to do that if they can really participate in this movement in the same way that that some of the larger accredited investors have been able to today. So for us you know retail has been a really important avenue for us to explore. I would also say it's been by far the most challenging avenue that we've explored but I'll just give you a quick backdrop on what we've done. We use the grant funding side of the house largely to set up product to do R&D and new financial products both for institutional investors and for the retail side those products span all asset classes we look at public and private stuff we look across all geographies really trying to say where is it that we think we can get traction you know with with the various investors we're trying to approach. The other thing that we're doing is we we have an investment fund that we launched in partnership with our friends at MacArthur Foundation to really invest in the managers and the products that are coming out of this this sort of innovation thinking so to think about what would it take for them to scale recognizing that if they're ever going to land on a B of A or Morgan Stanley or any of the big distribution platforms they're going to have to get to be a lot larger size than they're at today so the question is how do we get them to that stage so we've approached it both from the you know the grant side and the investment side but all with this idea of we've got to build new products we've got to inspire individuals and really try and let them in. Great great thank you all those are great introductory comments I've got some pointed questions for each of you but I just want to be clear let's make this a discussion so feel free to react to to one another and jump in so I think one of the big things even from this introductory commentary is what we're what we're trying to do here is is quote mass customization right we want clients to have mass mass access to impact investing we want them to be able to to get solutions that are customized to their press preferences on a massive scale to make this accessible we've got also got to make it easy we've got to take out the complexity Jackie I know Bank of America is doing a lot already to try and make this accessible and easy for clients with the Merrill Edge platform and so what are the tensions between trying to make this easy simple but not so simple that we're we're we're we're not achieving the customized needs of of clients can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges and try to build that out I think you hit you hit something at least that we we experience right if it's it's easy for those of us who've been in the impact space for a while to get really frustrated with the advisors as the intermediaries like you know we Jamie and I can quote you and you probably can quote back at us our own research saying you know over 50% of of our clients want this over 90% of millennials you know what's wrong with the advisors right but you you do have to understand that for a lot of them this is really confusing they're not sitting in this room you know they haven't been on this journey for how long they are still somewhat quite frankly afraid about the returns here they still have that back of the head is this concessionary is it something that we're confining the access etc and then they have the question of so you know what do I do to to customize right if Rahana wants something and Jamie wants something else and how does that play out so there's there's different approaches there I guess for us part of it has been simplifying it so that the conversation with advisors to go through some training but then in the end to say this is really for you about a client's preferences and their motivations how are they coming to this what what is that motivation and in some sense what do they want to avoid either because they think it's risky or because it's their values and just to be clear to over complicate this but that tension is even very real across the board right are are you coming to this from a financial perspective or from a values perspective and it's usually both but that can get all tricky for advisors but back to the you know so we've we've put this into an ABC framework what do you want to avoid how do you want to broadly have benefit and what in the world do you want to contribute and then when advisors get their head around something super simple like an ABC framework they can start to say okay how do I have a conversation that allows me to know a client better and get on the journey because the other thing Christina that's a challenge at least that we've found is advisors feel like this can be binary it's it's a hundred or not as opposed to it's a journey they don't have to have all the answers right away the client doesn't have to move that quickly and so forth so our process has been one to simplify into a framework and then two to make that connection between the client's preferences and the motivations that they have and the products that we have on our platform and so they can the advisors can start to say okay if I have a client who's really motivated just by better products or I'm sorry better companies and they're not really a specific thematic investor what are set of products that are compelling for that person versus if I have a client who's really motivated by a specific theme healthcare or something else then how do I help them avoid benefit and contribute with all of that that mapping pro preferences to products I'll admit it we're still moving that forward in terms of how we play that together and that's the piece that I feel like the field we can talk about that as we go forward but well the ABC it's brilliant it's obviously grounded in the I am the impact management projects work so kudos to them for coming up with that but it's also a brilliant framework for advisors to feel like this is simple right this is not that complicated Jamie I mean Morgan Stanley is facing the same challenges right how do you think about how to deliver a customized experience particularly in a public markets product context let's face it most of most of the clients of B of A and Morgan Stanley need public markets securities and funds in their in their portfolio how do you give that customized experience yeah no absolutely I mean our experiences just as are you know over two and a half million clients have very different set of financial goals that tend to have a very different set of impact goals as well and so we need to basically deliver a full spectrum of solutions across the entire sustainable and impact investing opportunity set with the funds that have the track record and the capacity and the kind of operational skill set to interact with the broad distribution platform like ours so ultimately at the end of the day we think this is really about putting that the client in the center of the conversation and asking some some pretty basic questions when it comes to what wealth management really gets at at its core I think you know ultimately you know what's the most popular question in a financial advisor gets from their client it's you know how am I doing or how are we doing and we've always had a very good answer to that on the financial side we can give you a quarterly statement and we are from spend lots of money on understanding you know the portfolio allocations the risk but the risk profiles of of of clients but on the impact side how can you at a kind of portfolio level distill into you know an easily kind of comprehensible way you know what ultimately is the impact in the alignment of the portfolio and so we spent a lot of time going out to try to find a partner to help us do that we ultimately decided to build it in-house many of the broad financial services firms now are you know essentially technology companies and we're really you know being able to turn on these types of tools in that intermediary role we think makes a lot of sense so this tool it's called Morgan Stanley IQ Morgan Stanley impact quotient and it's being turned on for all of our advisors on their desktop in the way that they can turn on different client reporting as they would present to any investment committee or family or individual to help them understand how their investments are performing and it's really designed to do three things it's a lot allows us to capture what a client cares about from an impact perspective and really try to prioritize that now some clients want to pick absolutely everything and so having them really focus on what matters most to them in terms of their vision of a more sustainable oriented world and that's when we once we have that information since we've got this big distribution network we can start to basically crowdsource where the product demand is we can play that back to asset managers to help them inform investment product development which is a little bit you know flying bind up to date now I think again on the public first private side there's returning this on first in the public market context the private markets you know sometimes people come to us and they want to invest in a early-stage solar lantern company in sub-Saharan Africa and they're super passionate about that but they don't have the resources or you know the investment dollars to do that type of investing or it would be a extremely risky approach and you got to walk them back to understanding different approaches in the public market context so yeah we just only ate between the impact solution side which the products and revenues that a company is producing versus the sustainable corporate practices this is more the ESG and then once we have that information we can now x-ray a portfolio essentially benchmark it and make a determination of how aligned or unaligned the portfolio is the entire portfolio level with what the client cares about most and before we always used to joke that that's great we'll give an impact report but we're going to print you a binder because you have to each manager understand their exact you know sustainability report their engagement report their CSR report whatever they might call it send you back all you know 10 or 8 or 10 managers into a big binder and no one really has the time to kind of go through that so this tool is is trying to break that down into the portfolio level and being able to aggregate it the firm level and then at the portfolio level and then ultimately also make suggestions to the advisor for funds that are very similar financial characteristics but superior impact alignment and that's where the advisor sets them up really nicely for an impactful conversation which is at the end of there they're there you know to provide advice to help their clients meet their their wealth goals and so we think this is a key component going forward very cool well maybe we can return to the question of those clients who are really craving and impact solution products that but they've got to be walked out it's about the Intel and the insights to make a much more informed decision about that as well before both for the advisor and for the client you know how do you give them the the information to make an informed decision and we think that tool is you know it's a it's in the journey as you said but that's a good first step yeah Rahana you're working as an independent advisor right now but you've also have experience working on a bank platform trying to break down the walls of a wealth management business without you know opening kimono on internal politics I wonder if you could share a little bit of your lessons learned from that effort yeah and how you're carrying that into your work today yeah no happy very happy to so when I was with Bank of New York Mellon we were we were trying to do two things at the same time we were trying to understand how we could create our own fund-to-funds mechanism that would really reward and celebrate managers in both the venture side and the private debt side that we're really investing in companies that fit the corporate mission particularly around technology and access to financial services and then we were trying to bring this at scale on the wealth management side and as Jackie and Jamie have both perfectly articulated the model in and of itself rewards some behavior over others and so on the wealth management side I think what what I had experience is in order for impact investing to actually become a set of services provided they need to promote and or sell products on the Bank of New York Mellon platform and in order for the products to get on the Bank of New York Mellon platform you need a whole set of stakeholders within Bank of New York Mellon they're finding the right managers or onboarding the right managers or creating bespoke custom product in order for that to happen you need enough critical mass on the on the institutional side or on the individual side to make that cost make sense and so what I think many of us have struggled with and there are folks that are figuring out how to do it on this very stage was that the the the mechanism of informing that critical mass is very very complex there's power embedded in multiple different places and ultimately at the end of the day it's very hard to figure out who is going to start the flywheel who is actually going to kick off this massive demand is it the clients themselves is it the advisors is it the product structures and I think as is the case in many large institutions it can be a little bit challenging to figure out who pushes the door open so everyone else can follow and in large large institutions it's even harder because everyone has their own reporting mechanism they have their own benchmarks for the year they have their own quarterly performance so sort of learning from that process spectrum is particularly focused on educating the suppliers of capital and so this is something that you all at tideline deal with all the time but the education process is it's not a fee based process always right the education process is a long cumbersome exhausting sometimes not very rewarding process of getting folks to really be able to ask better questions demand the right things expect from their financial advisors reasonable practical things right so that you're not facing 10 clients that are all asking for something totally different tomorrow and no one else wants to do that but educating suppliers of capital is actually as important if in our perspective not more important to make sure that they are responsible clients and customers in this ecosystem they're investing in CODS community they're investing in actual companies are they being responsible investors are they thinking about the impact they can have the things that they can demand in a thoughtful cost effective reasonable way and so we really focus on the suppliers of capital in the hopes of changing their education journey so that they can come to basically every organization on this stage and be much more reasonable in how they can feed that ecosystem and that really came from I think seeing at Bank of New York Mellon just how complex it is for someone to take the first step and so our theory of changes suppliers of capital can help take that first step but they sort of need to go back to school in a very sort of euphemistic way and and and be able to be better and more responsible stewards of that money yeah yeah it's interesting I mean there's some tension in our conversation already between you know Jamie saying we're a financial service company essentially a technology company at this point so we need to bring these solutions at scale technology based solutions to the need for this education that's deep hand holding amongst advisors and clients Josh you run a technology company that's really trying to sort of mainstream access through the power of technology how are you dealing with the need for education the ongoing need for education the ongoing need for for customization in a technology context yeah so let me tell you a story so we started our company open invest in 2015 in Y Combinator there were three co-founders so I came I've been in this space about a dozen years now and then two other guys from Bridgewater Associates the world's largest hedge fund who by the way had never even heard of ESG or SRI didn't even know they thought they had to just leave finance to find their souls and I was like hey guys there's this thing here and it's growing pretty fast but you know the product menu is kind of crappy and it's high priced and but the biggest problem we saw was that everyone has different values so if we're actually going to tackle this market let alone unlock the opportunity you have to solve for infinite combinations and I don't know as you guys talk about these things if like large firms are not equipped right now to address that we see it on our platform all the time people come in I care about gender diversity and net neutrality and I love Tesla I don't want Facebook and I inherited a bunch of GM stock so I shouldn't have that in my portfolio oh but now I just watch this documentary I changed my mind again so you know like even around your family can agree try and go home tonight and have a family conversation on what are you know shared values it's going to be a long conversation so we founded the company with a mission so that's what we mean we're public benefit corporation so we have a mission in our legal charter uh which is to use technology to mainstream value space investing and at the time my thesis was it's all about personalization and once we can make this truly personal engaging then you know it's going to take off I was wrong um it turns out that personalization is very valuable but it certainly does not unlock the dams of demand for what we're all doing here but I now have full conviction as to what it is that will which is that ESG is going to mainstream as features not as product and and let me explain that so in wealth management you have something like 90 percent retention rates clients do not change products or providers and this shapes the entire industry if you're frustrated about the rate of innovation it's because if Morgan Stanley spends millions of dollars on something they face all the compliance risk operational burden and how many Goldman clients are they going to steal at the end of the day right so it's you know fundamentally you have it it stops before the client and it's a slow industry as a result because the client's never going to switch so what you need to do is be able to go out to advisors and clients and say hey I'm not going to ask you to switch funds so this whole space that we're always been built up around like a fund-based business model switch from this vanguard fund to this calvert fund so the whole everything inches along instead you should go out to clients and say hey here's this button and if I press this button whatever you care about most you know or things you care about so amazonian deforestation or whatever the it is the risk of that is going to be virtually eliminated from your portfolio and it is not going to affect your performance or your cost structure do you want to hit the button that's when everybody wants to do it and so I think you need to use technology to fully abstract the values conversation away from the financial complexity and implications so that you don't need the advisors to get all educated on these new managers and tell these whole new stories and also have to explain why they didn't have them in this before instead they can say okay you know let's talk about sports talk about college talk about what you care about boom right and that needs to get seamlessly overlaid on the portfolio it's also impact reporting which you know it's amazing what you guys have done we do this as well so you know here's your performance this month this quarter and here's how many tons of carbon you save this month this quarter and it's equivalent to playing this many trees here's how many cigarettes you know avoid financing it's proxy voting it's a whole ecosystem of features that become available and many others will build that will be reliant on a clean data reactive supply chain that actually supplies these things and you know that's a whole another conversation actually implementing what I'm talking about is very disruptive but the end of the day I believe that features is how we get ESG into the hands it's how we get the 90% uptake the holy grail that we're all looking for can you guys react to that I mean I think this is a sort of revolutionary thought I mean Josh was talking about ultimately what I'm hearing is disintermediating the advisor from the supply chain disintermediating the managers from the supply chain making this completely a flexible open architecture that clients can manipulate for their own sorry I just want to correct that real quick because I don't want to have a robovisor conversation I actually think the advisors the star of the show what's happening and what people missed a few years ago was like oh our robots going to take over advisors dead wrong robots are going to take over manufacturers the people that are in trouble are folks like vanguard black rock like I mean the scale they've created doesn't even matter anymore because they've just they're dropping their fees to zero and even with the move to indexing like you're basically saying this whole thing can be automated so when technology hits a vertical at the end of the day all that matters is the raw inner subjective human interactions that's where the margins are everything upstream of that is going to ones and zeros and that's why Goldman bought united capital that's why we have a Latin wealth everyone's racing downstream because we can basically move light manufacturing into the fingertips of advisors now and their client relationship is the only remaining strategic asset in this value chain so now let's shut up react but it's I think we agree on the role of advisors yeah I absolutely I mean advisors are hungry to have the tools that their fingertips to have these types of conversations with their clients we have solutions that are on our type platforms that are kind of version 1.0 of what Josh has described that they've raised quite a bit of assets in the public market context because they are able to have this kind of menu approach and you can tilt the portfolio with minimum track record or tracking error and then the other dynamic for high net worth individuals around this idea of tax loss harvesting which can be a component as well in terms of kind of a carrot to get people engaged in the discussion and especially in the next gen conversation there's a lot of talk obviously in the next generation of wealth transfer advisors are using impact and sustainable investing as a hook to engage that next gen they've got the relationship with the patriarch and matriarch that but there's some shocking statistics on how unlikely that next gen client is actually going to necessarily stay with the advisor that their parents or grandparents had and so I think these types of tools are facilitating that I think obviously they're going to be disrupting incumbents and they're going to be scaling and getting their technology out there our firms are very risk adverse to start up type asset managers but they're out there proving that their technology is working and at the end of the day if that's what clients are reacting to and if they can see their views their impact and their values expressed in that type of solution start to translate to positive outcomes it's a very very powerful concept I'd probably I mean we're going to have violent agreement here on the role of advisors so you know in terms of that conversation although we do on our Merrill edge side have you know the equivalent of the robo where folks are making those choices and it's interesting right now they do have a couple of different questions and you can choose an impact portfolio or a traditional portfolio and we're seeing somewhere between 20 and 25 percent choosing impact portfolios and that's with zero additional marketing or push or anything like that so that's a you know just a bellwether of sort of what's to come I think agree that the features or customization does matter it's interesting I will say advisors find oftentimes you can get a little bit of a blank stare or almost overwhelmed from people if you ask them you know what they care about so that conversation is important to have the advisor be able to to go through that because it can sort of almost become a little bit of whiplash like well do I care about the Amazon and ocean plastics and gender and all of a sudden you made it harder for me than when I came in here you gave me almost more of a burden so there is some at least for us simplification we're finding big themes that people that really resonate with as opposed to absolutely everything has to be impacted through your public market portfolio and then I guess we'll go to this a little bit more Christina maybe later in the conversation back to pick up what Jamie was saying but this aspect of active passive there is a conversation about the next generation of active managers and how they're picking up sustainability business models that's not currently so that's a conversation yeah that is let's go back to that question I think that's an important one Adam I want to bring you into this conversation Rocketfeller Foundation is an interesting player in this market what I mean with all respect why is Rocketfeller Foundation even engaged in this conversation I mean why why isn't this retail product gap being solved by the private markets institutions that are represented on this panel what role is Rocketfeller particularly looking to play to help solve this gap yeah well I think I mean to be clear as well we're also not solving it because it's a very complicated a very complicated gap and I think we're certainly working towards it and trying to support a lot of partners that we think can have significant contributions but there's a number of reasons why even in our portfolio you'll see a lot of struggles you know very rather than go back to your point Josh around sort of you know is it product or is it this sort of additionality this engagement something else that gets tacked onto the product I mean our core strategy for the last several years has been let's find products that we think can if you will leverage track record where we think it exists you know big market opportunities like CDFIs or the investments DFI's are making in emerging markets those kind of things where we think there's actually a big opportunity and let's try and push those things towards retail where we think there's a natural connection and it's a lot harder than you know than that to do it basically those products aren't landing and they're not inspiring and we've done some really creative things actually I think you know we've got one product that we supported which is is really cool called impact shares they've launched three ETFs public market strategies and what they're trying to do is basically say you know we're going to partner with in this case it's the NWCP it's the YWCA and it's UNCDF to launch a gender empowerment a minority empowerment and then sort of a low income least income economy sort of strategy and in all cases you know those those those are great strategies they're designed by those partners and they get 100% of the net management fee because impact shares itself is a non-profit and so our thinking on this was you know when you're when your FA goes to have this conversation it's trying to explain a very complicated ESG metric you know MSCI whatever it might be strategy maybe it would be easier if we just said this is the NWCP who you already have a relationship with they're validating it and by the way they're getting paid for their active engagement of this portfolio over time and it's not that I don't think that strategy can work because I actually do think it's gaining traction and it is working in some cases but it's not scaling to hundreds of millions of dollars because it's just not that simple right the product is not going to be the one thing that that's missing and I think that's been a big part of our learning over the last couple years is maybe there are opportunities inside and outside the product space and you know Josh we've talked before about for example you know what should we do with shareholder voting right like proxy voting is this an opportunity is that a place to inspire people without asking them to change entirely their portfolio and so I think you know we've looked at a lot of these sort of themes in that sense but one thing I just want to revisit back to your question about sort of why Rockefeller and why do we continue to engage beyond the fact that again we think this is a critical step for the impact investing space to take right is to really begin to get the actual traction at the individual level and drive it down so that we're including a lot more people in the conversation of what this is and what finance can be but it's also that we have very interesting capital right we don't have the same boundaries that basically everyone else in this stage is going to run into we've got grant capital we can do innovation we can really test different areas we can partner with totally different groups you know we can partner with all the independent advisors or we can try and build something that heads towards you know the sort of the big shops like Morgan Stanley and B of A so I think you know there is a role for innovation there is a role for testing there is a role for sort of incubating new technologies new thinking that can support a lot of the work that happens here and that's really where we see ourselves is is really incubating that the other one last thing I'll say on that front is you know these paths and so as we think about you know the catalytic capital that we can deploy and the fund that we've got to support products and managers it really is saying you know how many investments is it going to take to get you on to one of these platforms it's saying what is that handoff going to look like and how do we be very strategic about not just supporting you on fund one but really growing the manager capacity and building it and recognizing that in some cases that's a five ten or longer year investment and it's not that foundations are really great at staying in one lane for ten years because I fully recognize they're not but they do to some degree have that scope and can and can lock in some of those that thinking so I think you know we want to incubate and grow these these big areas and opportunities that we hope do land in this space we want to think about the additional sort of you know tack on engagement strategies that I think are really critical and and you know product for us will still be a very important piece but recognizing all the limitations why product is not going to be enough fantastic well it's it's amazing to me to hear us kind of home in on this common theme which is even in on the you know the set end of the spectrum where you're innovating and incubating new products it all boils down to the access piece right how do we how to what are the access points the advisors obviously seems we have consensus on this panel the advisors not going away and they're the front lines I'd like to open it up to the audience and get some questions from from you all and kind of take this conversation the direction you'd like to see it go before we go further down our own rabbit holes so I know we have a couple of mics wandering around so if you could kind of stand up or raise your hand and I know they'll get a mic too soon who's going to be the first brave participant here we go thank you for being here today real quick so much of this seems to be focused around public equities and the public equity markets creating whether it's something similar as an open platform to get to equities or other platforms that you all have at B of A and Morgan Stanley when you look at the moniker of impact what else are you bringing it to your clients primarily the Morgan Stanley some Bank of America's that are one-off private deals things like that how do you get that on your platform with the scale that you have with the number of advisors so you mentioned specifically like solar lanterns and Sub-Saharan Africa I mean is that really a deal that you could bring to your clients or is that something that's down the line penetrating that particular space as we look at impact versus public equity markets that's a great question do you want to just share your name and organization at Dowdy Charlotte, North Carolina great who wants to so it's a it's a great question it's a one that we collectively have had a lot of conversations about and it's probably no news to the folks in this room that it is a challenge to get private market products into a wealth management channel so the I mean the short answer is the one-off deals are is not something that we will do right we're not going to that's something that we find you end up doing with more of a bespoke manager who's going to create a private market option for a ultra net worth individual we are increasingly seeing private funds the hedge funds private equity funds et cetera of that are at the scale that they are eligible for the platform and so that's something that we're excited about but still trying to crack the knot on that and then the the other side is we are increasingly seeing impact in public market funds although we're really trying I think the whole industry is trying to decide how do you frame that and the impact management project previously mentioned I think has a a good model of how to think about contribute if you think about the IFC framework that they came out in terms of not just metrics but management of funds how can we really say in public markets are you having impact either by advocacy or by some level of product and solution focused so those are the two sides that we're looking at yeah I mean we would categorize on our platform impact investing as predominantly in the private markets we're investing directly in funds or investing in companies that are addressing social environmental challenges same situation that Jackie described I also think and we also you know categorize funds as ESG integration I also feel like if you're a really good ESG integrated public market fund that's fine you don't need to go like rebrand yourself as an impact fund I think you're seeing yeah I mean sometimes I feel like we're living through like a live business school case study and all this stuff you're seeing these big huge GP funds that have certainly woken up to the fact of impact investing as a way to gather assets I think you know at the end of the day the clients inside our firms that are focused on impact you know they're seeing through a little bit of that sheen that those managers bring I think there's also the argument you made that that is a step in the right direction these funds and GPs wouldn't be launching these types of funds if they didn't think that they wanted to put their name and their resources behind it I think the market's going to start to clear some of that but there's a gap right you've got very catalytic funds that are doing extraordinary work around impact with deep measurable impact producing financial returns but they're simply not set up to deal with an organization like ours and ultimately against this you know euphemistic term around distribution you know Josh's technology is you know there you could see how that could be distributed and scaled quickly it's a software you know type technology at the end of the day the funds that are on the impact on the private market side are just capacity like is it really appropriate to put them on a platform like ours because they'd be you know inundated you know it's many people aren't going to have a problem with having too much money but if you're not being able to match up how you're deploying into your strategy with the fund that's that's coming in it can be a real problem and I think again as Jackie mentioned too it's how do you categorize the funds into the themes that people are are gravitating for so we're seeing a lot around climate solutions obviously gender diversity which Jackie's a leader on as well and so I think that has helped orient some of that there's also every deck you see these days has the STGs slapped on it and so I think calibrating that side the only other thing I'd mentioned that I think there's a big interest in and there's just a dearth of product that's this idea of place-based investing people love this if you can see the projects the companies in your backyard you know we have 700 wealth management offices around the country and obviously very geographically diverse here in the US and so we've been more in salaries that are written some large bonds for CDFIs we actually just turn on the impact note from capital impact partners Calvert's had a product for many many years and been very successful on this but they've been struggling to kind of being turned on on a platform like ours so we're hoping we can start to build the market around some of these more impactful organizations when they're it might you know again you can argue with us where not it's a public or private market vehicle but clearly the impact is there and on the ground and measurable and they're delivering on the returns as well great great can I just add something really quick I just I thought it was a really really thoughtful question and I think one of the things that we have actually found in in our focus on the on the investor education side is actually really digging in on some of the ideas or misconceptions around public or private so I think a lot of the storytelling around direct investment is really really compelling and that's right that's what's gotten us here that's what's motivating people we I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that somewhere between 90 to 92 percent of our clients walk in on day one and boldly and proudly proclaim we're gonna start a fund and then we sort of have a conversation on are you are you willing to take a seven-year lock up are you willing to be risky with your capital when do you need to show your stakeholders that it's working and very very quickly we realize that no we're actually not in a position to start a fund that what we should be talking about is really thoughtful subordinated debt or partnership in a Rockefeller product that's really thinking about catalytic capital or potentially using modern portfolio theory that's already out there to just think about better exposure on the public side and so I think I think one of the responsibilities all of us in this space have but particularly intermediaries like ours is to be really really clear that impact is possible and absolutely every asset class whatever it's definitional allegory is whether it's ESG or SRI or impact it's possible in every asset class and so starting with what is the change that you want to see whether it's with the SDGs or whether it's in a place in a community what is the change that you want to see seems to be a better starting point to then have a conversation around okay where do we put that money that makes sense for you and I think it's a it can be a less attractive story which we found sometimes is that people are saying well how do I talk about the solar lantern company that'll come but I think we're finding that by starting with an outcomes based approach which everybody on the stage is doing we're getting a lot more clear about how an investment methodology serves that not not the other way around so I just wanted to add that up that was really helpful Rohana I think there's a again another theme cropping up here the the clarity around segmentation of products the definitions around the various approaches to impact across products and then just basic transparency around what these platforms can and cannot offer in those segments is super helpful another question in the back Hi I'm David O'Leary from World Vision Canada I head up the impact of vesting arm of World Vision Canada it's a large INGO I'd be curious for your perspective we're thinking a lot about you know as an INGO that has you know across the globe you know millions of donors and in particular the sort of child sponsorship model where you've got people contributing every single month money and clearly care about you know our cause and mission aligned with you how you sort of tap into that create you know retail potentially create retail investment product to put in front of those people who already buy into and are aligned with your mission and find a way to make it real easy for them to say yeah you know I'd like to take some money and make an investment that is also you know going to impact your mission which I'm already you know bought into and so I'm curious for your perspective and Adam you'd mentioned specifically kind of how do you tap into those retail investors you know you already have the buy-in so the role of INGOs and that sort of relationship they have with donors and sort of converting them to investors I'm just curious for any feedback you'd have on that I wish we had Kiva on the panel to take that question but any any takers here on that how do you convert a retail donation-based model to a to invest from base I mean I'll just say our experience with the products we've launched is that it's not so much of a convert as we thought it was it was more of a let's find the where the affinity group also has pots of money so it's kind of like saying you know and this isn't something we've finalized or been able to be successful but the strategy has been more on you know it's not let's take the NAACP donors and convert the donation we actually want the donation to continue but let's see if there's a way we can convert some of their portfolio or let's go to the historically black colleges and universities who may also align with this strategy directly and already have a relationship to the NAACP or however it may land and you know it's the same thing from the UNCDF perspective and they're looking at sort of you know we've got these donor countries who have been contributing for years who might be able to have a bigger catalytic effect if they also put in some of the the money that they may have sitting in other pots so for us it hasn't we've not been so successful on the conversion piece if that's if I'm understanding the question correct on that side but it's not to say that there's not completely other pots of money that we haven't had the conversation around right and that has actually been fairly interesting and you'll see the same thing I mean with some of the funds we've launched on that side we're getting interest in and conversations with you know union groups and and and the pensions that sit behind some of these big organizations that work on these issues that really want to explore if there's a a role for them to play in that as well so I do think there is an affinity group albeit it's not so much the conversion and then for us you know as you think about sort of positioning it because this was a big part of our our strategy here was really what role is you know the NAACP or any non-profit able to actually play in having this conversation I will say that there's also a lot of there's a lot of bumps in that road too right in terms of they can't sell that product right they're not they don't want to go down SEC registration they've got to be very very very careful as to what their formal engagement is on the product so I think you know the structuring and the legal design of setting up something like that and taking on that role is there that being said their brand is super important and that has been what we lead with because that goes back to you know for how I was talking about storytelling and this kind of stuff and one group that's good at storytelling is actually the non-profits that are actually doing the work daily and so we have been very very successful at leveraging that piece of it and and you know really putting them front and center of the conversation I think you know that's kind of the what you know what is everyone good at and and then this the product should be structured to leverage that piece of it and not you know not so much try to put people in a new position great I saw another question back here Hi Fernando Contra from Seventeen as in management so Regina you just said like impact can be done in any asset class and my question is in the public markets unless you have a proxy vote how do you generate impact is there real measurable impact in the public market I want to make a comment more broadly on this and it might be heresy and the units okay so first of all if we're talking about democratization nine like and we're talking about addressing normal folks the vast majority of their capital is in public markets equities and fixed income so either we can make cocktail party stories or we can actually democratize that's one thing the second is that these corporations are more powerful than governments they're only getting more powerful Amazon's going to take over everything sorry to tell you and there's good news though which is that we actually all own these companies where they've socialized themselves essentially in order to compete in the market it's like we are fueling the system right if Exxon wants to go spread climate change denial pseudoscience they're doing it because they've calculated it's the best way to generate returns for you right you're demanding it through your intermediaries so they did it for you and yes it does come back in some ways to shareholder resolutions so there's no reason that all the shareholders of Apple can't be having a conversation right now about what their company should be doing it's our company the CEO works for you they report to you but I also think on the impact side it is about translating that so these impact metrics are very powerful the numbers are huge I mean the calculations we do are straightforward like this is the carbon footprint of this company you own 0.0001 percent of its market cap so you own 0.001 percent of their carbon footprint and if you divest you don't now it doesn't mean you've taken that carbon out of the market but you have avoided financing that carbon and I think in some ways this is becomes a categorical categorical imperative so at scale yes their cost of capital their price is based on supply and demand no one questions voting even though your vote is negligible and frankly I think unless you live in a swing state at the federal level what you do with your capital and most of that is in public markets is probably the most powerful tool that you have to change the world in your everyday life just to build on that I mean it is a question that gets asked a lot and my own journey was really more in the private markets earlier and then coming over to the the bank about six years ago I'll say personally I was not as aware of how impactful public markets were in decisions in large corporations until working at the bank where we would get a phone call from the C-suite every time there was a new industry launched you know that are we in or out and if we're not in what would it take for us to be in and who of our peers is in and so in a way that I had not personally experienced some of what the growth in ESG products has created is a race to the top in corporations and you can argue that race to the top you know whether we all give paternity leave or not maybe doesn't matter in the same way as some you know private market but it actually I mean these are large corporations who are the employers who you know there's so many pieces that come from those decisions so hundreds of thousands of people affected by that little policy change right more than all the little social impact back social enterprises and history combined right they change so so I think that the the aspect of what's happening in public markets creates that one drive for transparency right all you know in terms of pay equity in terms of policies in terms of lobbying dollars all of that stuff is public market money moving and influencing and our lead us equity analysts will say we're at the the end of the beginning of this space so we're sort of what do you want to call it you know inning free or something but the projection is that money flowing into ESG funds is equal to the value of the S&P right now right so this believe it or don't believe it it doesn't really matter the money's moving that way corporations are really clear they want to be on the front end of this and they want to be on the front end of this also to attract employees so there's so many sort of pieces of that flywheel that we can tap in bigger and and stronger ways now I will also say we're in a big and so you can do all of that and we have to think about the capital deployment side of this how do we move money to corporations who are actually specifically solving problems but that's the bigger conversation that corporations are having with the business roundtable and other things yeah absolutely we haven't had a chance to get into the whole field of impact reporting and the metrics you've talked about powerful impact metrics around public companies and if advisors are the first favorite punching bag ESG data providers are the second favorite punching bag in this market so I but we only have a minute and change left so I'm going to ask each of you in six words or less you know what would you wish for this market you know what specific advancement is needed whether it's reporting advisor education better client awareness better segmentation what do we need to move the needle on democratization Adam sorry we need about a thousand things to move the needle effectively but so I'll point to one I really like the idea of this sort of you know the active engagement in the corporation I think better defining what active engagement on ESG means and better supporting of active engagement I think is a huge step forward create Josh in patients the world's going to hell in a hand basket right we've got power outages here today because of wildfires my kids are entering an apocalypse so we don't have time to create utopia the stuff I work on is not like the sexiest it's not the stuff that you know is my dream land we have to hit scale we have to do it today so the only option is technology at least in concert with all the other research white papers education media we need major step changes right now Rahana yeah I would say each investor whether you're an institution or an individual has the responsibility to know themselves first yeah ultimately this is about transparency investing historically has not been a transparent industry these tools are giving our end investors much greater transparency to make an informed decision and that's very powerful all the capital markets are interconnected and there is enormous power in helping people make an informed and intentional choice once they know what they own to drive that forward Jackie last word there only is six six words simple changes at scale so I think that aspect of you know there are so many too out of point there's a thousand things but we actually have to do a few of them well and large great thank you so much this is a really complicated process thanks for all you're doing to bring access thank you thank you thank you all