NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Seeds, a financial technology firm that empowers financial advisors to offer clients a more intentional, purposeful, and personalized investing experience, has partnered with JUST Capital to deliver engaging impact insights to advisors and the clients they serve. Co-founded in 2013 by leaders in business, finance, and civil society, including Paul Tudor Jones II, Deepak Chopra, and Arianna Huffington, JUST tracks, analyzes, and ranks companies on the issues that Americans care about most.
Seeds’ portal experience will present new impact scores based on JUST’s stakeholder performance data, all related to specific issues such as pollution, human rights, and workforce inclusion. Scores will show how portfolios perform compared with the universe of investible companies, adding context for investors to better understand their relative impact. In Seeds, advisors can assess investor profiles and preferences, then present a tailored, holistic portfolio and related impact metrics — all in one experience.
“We’re excited to partner with Seeds to drive capital toward more just companies that are doing right by their stakeholders,” said Martin Whittaker, CEO of JUST Capital. “Our team at JUST is focused on innovative ways to elevate the priorities of the public and incentivize companies to adopt just business behaviors. By partnering with Seeds and delivering our best-in-class impact insights, we look forward to engaging with a wider pool of values-aligned investors in our work.”
“Getting the impact story right is critical so that clients can really feel how the advisor has connected the dots through the entire journey,” said Seeds co-founder and CEO Zach Conway. “By partnering with JUST, we’re able to offer a more compelling and complete story so advisors can inspire and engage more clients.”
A global pandemic, climate disasters, and a new administration have put ESG issues front and center for investors. To date, JUST has surveyed more than 110,000 Americans on what they believe U.S. companies should prioritize most when it comes to just business behavior. These deep insights will help guide Seeds in how they deliver information that will resonate most.
“A lot of impact reporting is either too generalized, too specific, or just generally misses the mark in trying to captivate the client,” said Conway. “Thanks to JUST’s research, we can now select from metrics that we know will speak to a broad investor base. Then the platform can automatically tailor the message to each client.”
By presenting scores based on JUST’s data, Seeds will give investors a more objective, third-party perspective related to the ESG quality of their portfolios.
“Anyone can put an ESG label on a product and claim it scores well, and we know that investors are rightfully wary of that kind of greenwashing,” said Seeds’ Head of Product and COO Kristen O’Grady. “We wanted to partner with an outside firm to validate our portfolio impact, rather than just claiming it ourselves.”
Together, Seeds and JUST Capital also remain focused on a broader mission to inspire the wealth advisory industry to further embrace values-aligned investing. With trillions of invested dollars still empowering bad corporate behavior, Seeds and JUST believe broad scale change will require financial advisors to recognize the business opportunity.
“Advisors are starting to see that they have the power to make a difference,” said Conway. “At the same time, they can win business by showing clients that investing can be a more meaningful, intentional, values-driven experience. Just like their investors, advisors can align money with purpose.”
About Seeds
Launched in 2019, Seeds is a leading financial technology firm that empowers advisors to offer clients a more intentional, purposeful, and personalized investing experience. Through Seeds’ client experience platform, advisors can understand investor profiles, assess holdings for financial and ESG risks, present tailored portfolio solutions, and continually engage. In tandem with the technology experience, Seeds acts as sub-advisor to RIAs. Seeds Investor LLC is a registered investment advisory firm located in the state of New York. To learn more about Seeds, please visit www.seedsinvestor.com.
About JUST Capital
The mission of JUST Capital, an independent nonprofit, is to build a just economy that works for all Americans by helping companies improve how they serve all their stakeholders – workers, customers, communities, the environment, and shareholders. We believe that business and markets can and must be a greater force for good, and that by shifting the resources of the $19 trillion private sector, we can address systemic issues at scale, including income inequality and lack of opportunity. Guided by the priorities of the public, our research, rankings, indexes, and data-driven tools help measure and improve corporate performance in the stakeholder economy.
Since 2015, JUST Capital has surveyed 110,000 Americans – representative of the U.S. adult population – including more than 17,000 in 2020 alone, to identify the issues that matter most to the public regarding corporate business behavior. JUST Capital then tracked and evaluated 928 companies across five stakeholders, 19 issues, and 339 unique data points to produce the ranking model that drives America’s Most JUST Companies, including the Forbes JUST 100. To learn more about how data-driven insights are creating a more just future for capitalism, visit www.JUSTCapital.com.
