2013 sustainable financial adviser of the year: Julian Parrott, Ethical Futures

Julian Parrott, partner at Edinburgh-based Ethical Futures, is Blue & Green Tomorrow’s 2013 sustainable financial adviser of the year.

Parrott specialises in ethical investment, after co-founding Ethical Futures with Martin Wight in 2005. He is a former chair of the Ethical Investment Association (EIA) and used to sit on the board of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF).

He appeared on the financial adviser panel at Blue & Green Tomorrow’s Sustainable Investment Bootcamp in September. Speaking at the event, he said, “Our business is built on understanding clients; understanding that we’re financial advisers and that our main job is to provide financial advice, but doing that within a context that recognises the client’s values.”

Parrott is a regular contributor to Blue & Green Tomorrow, providing insight and opinion on specific issues like the retail distribution review (RDR) to ethical investment more generally. He wrote an article in June about why “investing” in financial advice will give investors greater insight into their planning needs.

What Julian Parrott says…

“I would just like to say thank you to Blue & Green Tomorrow and how chuffed I am to be recognised for the small part that I play in promoting ethical and sustainable investment.

“An award relating to sustainability at this time of year, in the midst of the annual consumption fest that Christmas seems to have become (perhaps it always was), seems like a good time to take a reality check and remind us that we just can’t go on using up the world’s resources without any consideration for the future.

“Our business is called Ethical Futures because as financial planners, we look forwards for clients’ personal futures and also to consider what role their investments play in  the world as a whole. Every action we take individually has a consequence – there are no ‘externalities’ as the economists like to call them.

“We are glad to see that more and more clients are not just seeking to save their consciences by avoiding some ‘nasties’ but are signing up to the concept of investing in a way that creates a mandate for investment managers to focus strongly on sustainability for the future. It’s a long process to reverse a convention that assumes you should just maximise profit at whatever cost – but increasingly through the work of sustainable and ethical investment and through campaigns like Move Your Money, the public is realising that there is an opportunity to make their money change their world.”

Highly commended: Mark Hoskin (Holden & Partners), John Ditchfield (Barchester Green), Helen Tandy (Gaeia) and Tanya Pein (In2 Consulting)

The person/organisation was chosen by the Blue & Green Tomorrow editorial team.