Values-Based Investing with Crossmark

At its core, values-based investing seeks to align your financial goals with your personal beliefs. We seek to offer a straightforward approach for your investments to reflect what matters most to you. Every investor has a mission, and that mission matters.

Values-based investing includes diving deep into traditional financial metrics—such as earnings quality or debt ratios. The goal is to identify companies good for your portfolio. Values-based investing also includes diving deep into nonfinancial metrics that may resonate with your core convictions—such as product involvement or business ethics. The goal is to identify companies good for the world.

With values-based investing, your portfolio can match your mission. Part of Crossmark’s mission is to inspire and equip our clients to go further in all God has for them. With an objective and quantitative approach, our values-based methodology identifies investments that first and foremost seek to meet your financial goals, while also prioritizing your values.

Each client has a different set of priorities and values that affect how they want to invest. We help investors align their values with a broad spectrum of investment solutions that align with these themes.

Do no harm

“Avoid” or “negative screening” is the process of excluding investments in companies or sectors that fail to meet certain nonfinancial (risk-based) standards, such as controversial industries or poor corporate governance. Some of these standards may be based on a company’s product or service and measured on materiality and/or direct involvement.  Examples may include alcohol, gambling, tobacco, and pornography. These exclusions are designed to minimize exposure to various risks, whether regulatory, economic, sustainability-related, or otherwise.

Do good

Values-based investors are committed to doing good by choosing to support companies that embrace ethical business practices. Positive inclusion enables us to actively seek out those companies that, through their internal and external activities, work to reduce risk and build long-term resilience using sustainable and responsible business practices. At Crossmark, we intentionally seek to include these kinds of companies in our portfolios when the “embrace” screen is applied.

Promote change from within

We use our voice to encourage companies to implement policies and procedures that promote strong corporate governance and protect shareholder values. We believe that proxy voting is both our duty and ethical responsibility. We amplify our voice by joining advocacy efforts with like-minded membership organizations.