Envestnet boosts social-responsibility screening

FWR Staff

2 December 2008

Platform helps advisors design portfolios to meet clients meet SRI criteria. Third-party investment platform provider Envestnet has upgraded its Sustainability Platform to enable advisors to provide "socially responsible investment" (SRI) options to investors with separately managed accounts (SMAs) and unified managed accounts (UMAs).

SMAs are professionally managed portfolios made up of individual securities. UMAs are single-account investment products that typically feature combinations of manager-model SMAs, mutual funds and ETFs.

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"We've added another level of customization to our investment services," said Bill Crager, President of Envestnet. "Our new enhancement enables investors to customize portfolios in a way that matches their investment objectives with broader environmental, and cultural perspectives."

Michael Lent, CIO of New York-based Veris Wealth Partners -- a firm Envestnet describes as its "sustainability partner" -- says that one in every nine dollars under "portfolio management" in the U.S. is earmarked for SRI. Envestnet's Sustainability Platform responds to SRI growth in "by integrating a level of customization that takes into consideration a client's desire to incorporate factors to the traditional equity products that they invest in."

The Sustainability Platform amounts to a series of "screens" that attempt to exclude companies that "derive significant levels of revenue" from things like booze, tobacco, weapons, gambling, nuclear power, pornography, stem-cell research, contraceptives and usury, or have "poor standing" in, for example, animal welfare and human rights.

Chicago-based Envestnet provided advisory support to more than 100,000 advisors with $81 billion in client assets across more than 650,000 accounts at the end of August 2008. -FWR

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