Altum Faithful Investing

Social Impact Statements

The Social Enterprise Mark criteria includes a requirement that the applicant can demonstrate that social and/or environmental objectives are being achieved.

In support of this, new applicants and renewing Mark holders are asked to respond to a set of social impact questions, which are designed to help them think about the social impact they create, and to articulate this clearly and succinctly.

 

Updated July 2020

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1) What are the main social differences you have aimed to make (or supported)?

Our primary purpose as a social enterprise is to generate profits and distribute 100% of these (commonly known as dividends) in support of projects that address the many faces of poverty: material, cultural, social and spiritual poverty.

In order to achieve this goal, we offer to our clients a sustainable business model based on what we are good at: offering faith-consistent investment services based on Christian principles.

 

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2) What actions have you taken to deliver the aims described above?

We have launched the first investment fund in Spain based on Christian & Catholic principles: Altum Faith-consistent Equity.

We have managed to advise above EUR150M in assets in a sustainable and faith-consistent way in less than 18 months.

We have developed an online tool that provides ethical analysis on an investment universe above 1.500 listed companies. This service is offered for retail, institutional and professional customers.

We offer seminars and courses and formation on faith-consistent investing.

We have collaborated with the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary Home for Children in Dakar (Senegal) at their foster house La Pouponniêr, which shelters 90 children, mainly abandoned babies whose mothers die giving birth.

We have supported the production on “The Greatest Gift” a movie that shows how forgiveness can be the gratest gift that a person con ginve and receive. Forgiveness is the answer to the the power of God’s love, which defies the human logic of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. Altum’s option is to encourage the power of forgiveness.

We are supporting the Reconstruction Project of the Christian presence on the Nineveh Plains (Iraq) that consists of financing projects that allow the Iraqi Christians who desire to return to their homes in the towns of the Nineveh Plains, in decent and safe conditions.

 

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3) What has changed, what specific outcomes and benefits have been realised as a result of the above actions?

The impact of our faith-consistent advisory services:

• We have saved above EUR2M in fees for our clients, many of them religious institutions, who have been able to dedicate those proceeds to their social activities.
• Over EUR150M have been taken away from conventional investing and have been destinated towards socially responsible investment funds, supporting a wide range of investments, ranging from microcredits in Latin America and Indonesia to clean energy projects and well as green bonds.

The impact of our social projects:

• More than 90 babies from the foster house “La Popuponnière” (Dakar) have benefited from Altum’s financial support in basic needs such as food and medicines.
• North of 60,000 spectators have seen the movie “The Greatest Gift” since its première in 2018, living first-hand how forgiveness can change people’s lives.
• Supported the entity Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, responsible for the reconstruction of 1.233 totally destroyed houses, 3.520 burnt houses, 8.217 partially damages houses as well as 34 Church properties totally destroyed, 132 Church properties burnt and 197 Church properties partially damaged.

 

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4) Please describe how your income and/or any profits generated from previous years has been maximised in delivering social outputs and adding social value.

Just 6 months after the launch of Altum Faithful Investing, we proudly received the award for being among “The 10 most innovative social initiatives in 2018” provided by CAF – Latin American Development Bank and Entrepreneurial Commmitment Foundation.

 

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Supplementary details

The below questions are not mandatory, but Mark holders are encouraged to answer them where possible, to provide a fuller account of their social outcomes and the social value they create.

5) How do you and other people know your aims are being achieved? Or how will you know?

From an investment advisory perspective:

• Any investment asset recommended by Altum must have gone through a thorough process not only from a financial perspective but also from an ethical perspective that needs to be approved by Altum Investment Committee.
• Altum counts with an Ethical Investment Committee composed of prestigious professionals from the fields of ethics and morality, environment, bioethics and anthropology.
• Altum has a collaboration agreement with the prestigious Jérôme Léjeune Foundation, experts in bioethics and environmental ethics.
• We receive regular reports form the investments funds we invest in with information both about their financial performance and also about their environmental footprint and impact that their products have for the human well-being.

From our approach to our social projects:

• We take traceability very seriously. Every project needs to pass a thorough due diligence which includes a detailed description of not only the project but also de entity supporting the project and a personal interview with the promoting entity.
• We make all the relevant data available in our website as well as in the media.

 

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6) How many people have benefitted from your actions and what measures of benefit can you report?

See response to question 3 above.

 

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7) What examples can you provide of a typical service user experience, that help illustrate the benefits they have experienced as a result of your actions?

A recent example we started working on right after the summer: Portfolio Managers from big Asset Management companies, Family Offices, Religious Institutions, Foundations and ordinary people who want to manage their investments in a faith-consistent came to us asking for an online tool that would allow them to monitor their investments with reliability and professionalism from a sustainable and ethical point of view compatible with their Christian believes. That is why we created Altum Explorer, a web-based analysis tool that allows our clients to include non-financial criteria in their investment decisions.

This has allowed them to give testimony of a responsible and coherent way of managing not only their lives, but also their investment portfolio.

This has allowed us, the Altum Team, to make ethical investing available to more people and increasing our impact by promoting positive investments decisions on the one hand, but also to increase our revenue sources in order to make more proceeds available to our social projects.

 

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8) What social and environmental benefits have you created arising from internal operational policies and other actions?

Environment & Transport:

• Zero-paper policy.
• It is a company culture to go to meetings either by walk or by bike.
• However, for those cases where the client does not live nearby, Altum’s sole vehicle was chosen electric on purpose.

Balancing of work and family life:

• Teleworking for those posts amenable to it (which at the moment are 100% of them).
• Flexible working hours for those posts not related to stock-market hours.
• Is it your birthday? Take the day off!: We give the day off to employees on their birthday so that they can spend that special day with their families and friends.

Atmosphere in the office:

• "Stop and Pray”: Voluntarily, every day we stop midday whatever activity we are doing and pray (for whatever suits that moment: family, clients, suppliers, the people we try to help which we will never meet in person…)
• "Meet and Move!”: We tend to organize meetings among employees taking a 20 minute walk – helps a lot to open up and come up with creative ideas (especially with the nice weather in Spain!)