Investing for Catholics Welcomes Father Séamus Finn, OMI
IRVINE, CA—January 19, 2010-- Investing for Catholics today announced the addition of Father Séamus Finn, OMI as a consultant to the firm. Father Finn is the Director of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation for the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He has been selected by the firm to guide its efforts toward educating individuals and institutions about the need for increased understanding of investment transparency, risk management and their roles in proper and prudent faith-based investing.
Father Finn is widely regarded as a globe-trotting priest on a mission of accountability at the highest corporate level, Finn represents the Oblates at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in New York (ICCR www.iccr.org); a coalition of faith-based and socially responsible investors who work together to engage corporations. The coalition’s more than $100 billion is invested to promote the integration of faith-based values into the investment process. Father Finn also represents the Oblates on the executive committee of the International Interfaith Investment Group (3IG www.3ignet.org).
“We are excited to integrate Father Finn’s unparalleled experience and high level of commitment to promote Catholic values and faith-consistent investing into our investing strategies. Like few others, Finn has the ability to act as a bridge to help us marry the core values of Catholic investment leaders with a viable and prudent investment strategy available to individual and institutional investors,” said Mary Brunson, Vice President of Investing for Catholics, a division of Index Funds Advisors, Inc.
“The recent financial crisis revealed a lack of adequate transparency and regulatory enforcement and a clear absence of appropriate risk management and monitoring. The opportunity for all Catholics to invest their assets in a manner that can avoid these hazards is a very powerful one,” Finn stated.
Investing for Catholics plans to incorporate both Father Finn’s hands-on experience and his commentary into its education platform, thus providing a window through which Catholic investors can better witness the efforts and concerns of large-scale faith-based institutional investors, as well as a vehicle for prudent faith-based investing. Investing for Catholics implements an indexing strategy to keep transparency high and costs low. Investing for Catholics’ Index Portfolios are designed to capture similar risk and return metrics as the traditional globally diversified index portfolios they seek to replicate.
About Investing for Catholics
Investing for Catholics specializes in providing investors with the education and thereby, the ability to notably improve risk-adjusted returns by investing in globally diversified portfolios of passively managed no-load index mutual funds that are screened for Catholic values.
The company’s website investingforcatholics.com is data rich, providing academic research and industry reports that support the assertion that every investor would do far better if they set aside their the need to predict future market movements, and rely instead on financial research that incorporates 82 years of stock market history.
Investing for Catholics’ Socially Responsible Index Portfolios are screened to exclude:
- Companies that earn at least 20% of their total business revenue through the production and/or sale of military weapons and/or weapons of mass destruction
- Companies that are engaged in certain for-profit business activities in or with the Republic of Sudan
- Companies that earn at least 15% of their total business revenue through the production and/or sale of tobacco or alcohol products
- Companies that earn at least 20% of their total business revenue from gambling activities
- Companies that directly participate in abortions
- Companies that manufacture pharmaceuticals, abortive agents, or contraceptives
- Companies that earn at least 15% of their total business revenue from publishing or selling pornographic materials
- Companies that are for-profit healthcare providers
- Companies whose operations have had major recent controversies relating to child labor infractions in the U.S. or abroad
To learn more, see www.investingforcatholics.com, or contact Mary Brunson by calling 949-428-0432 or vial email mary@ifa.com.
Investing for Catholics is a division of Index Funds Advisors, Inc. To learn more, visit www.ifa.com, or www.investingforcatholics.com