It’s time for advisors to “get off the sidelines” when it comes to ESG investing.

The world has changed.  New data sets are needed to understand how investments may perform over the long-term. While myths persist with respect to performance, ESG is not the socially responsible investing of years ago.

In this Barron’s piece, Jeff explains why “we use the global positioning system analogy: 25 years ago, you took a road trip, you used a map. Today, you get in your car, and you turn on your GPS, and it’s a three-dimensional view of the trip. The 10-K is very one-dimensional. It gives you stale data of the company you’re investing in. You need to wait until the next quarter to get new data.”

ESG topics and data provide additional insights into corporate performance that just are not available via traditional financial metrics. Advisors who are still not incorporating ESG into their practices are missing out on both potential performance and risk mitigation, as well as an increasingly large client base of individual investors who want to know how their investments are contributing to a better world, or not.