My Catholic Life! recommends Savant Capital Management as an excellent independent, fee-only investment advisor. Savant can also assist you in aligning your portfolio with your faith. Invest with a clear conscience while reaping the benefits of one of today’s leading investment advisory firms.
OVERVIEW FROM SAVANT
- Investors increasingly want their investment portfolios to be aligned with their personal values.
- Personal philosophies vary widely, but frequently reflect views on health care matters such as abortion and contraception, weapons of mass destruction, and human and/or labor rights.
- Today over $3 trillion is professionally managed using social-moral criteria.
- Not all socially-screened investment products are necessarily good ones. Some may not perform according to an investor’s expectations, may charge a very high fee, or may not have sufficient diversification. Many actually ignore or directly conflict with Catholic social moral teachings, as outlined by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
SAVANT’S APPROACH
- Savant’s goal is to maintain an ideal balance of investment and values-based objectives:
Investment objective: Maximize investment returns while avoiding undue volatility and risk.
Values-based objective: Utilize investment holdings that are selected keeping in mind the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines.” - Savant conducts ongoing extensive research on the social-moral investment products available in the industry. We have over 20 years of experience working with Catholic institutions to meet investment and social moral goals.
- Our strategy incorporates broad social-moral criteria as described in the next section.
- The end result is a social-moral portfolio with characteristics similar to the standard (non-screened)
Savant model portfolios:
Strategy focused on asset allocation
Broad diversification
Low cost
Tax-efficient
CATHOLIC SOCIAL-MORAL CRITERIA
- Several funds utilized are actively screened by the fund managers to avoid areas of concern.
- In order to get the right asset mix, a few funds are used that are not screened by the fund managers. Savant analyzes the underlying holdings of these funds using software from a leading social-moral research firm, IW Financial, to ensure there are no significant holdings in the areas of concern.
- Some asset classes do not require screening, as they naturally do not have securities in areas of concern such as REITs, commodities, and government bonds.
The social-moral strategy is structured to avoid companies in the following areas:
Abortion/Contraception/Embryonic Stem Cells
Serious Human Rights Violators
Adult Entertainment
Military/Weapons of Mass Destruction /Landmines
RISK AND RETURN
- The Catholic social-moral strategy is constructed with the same 15 asset classes and target allocations as those in standard (non-screened) portfolios managed by Savant.
- The specific investments that incorporate social screening are managed by the same highly-regarded fund companies we utilize in our standard portfolios including Vanguard, Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) and PIMCO.
- With similar asset classes, allocations, and investment managers, we expect the social-moral portfolios to perform similarly to the standard Savant portfolios over the long run.
- The average fund expenses for the social-moral strategy are slightly higher than non-screened funds, but overall very similar to those of our regular portfolios.
For more information on Catholic Values Investing, visit www.savantcapital.com
Source: “2010 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States”, Social Investment Forum Foundation. Savant Capital Management is a Registered Investment Advisor. Savant’s marketing material should not be construed by any existing or prospective client as a guarantee that they will experience a certain level of results if they engage Savant’s services. The information provided should not be construed as personal investment advice.