Back to Blog

Personal Capital Launches Socially Responsible Investing

Personal Capital Launches Socially Responsible Investing

Wealth tech company Personal Capital is making it easier for investors to put their money in causes that are important to them with the launch of its Socially Responsible Personal Strategy today.

The New York-based company is offering clients the ability to select a personalized socially responsible investment strategy with the same pricing structure as the rest of its offerings– a single, flat fee. “There has been a surge of investor interest in aligning their money with their values,” said Craig Birk, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Management at Personal Capital.

Personal Capital has teamed with Sustainalytics to screen equity holdings in the U.S. for three factors– environmental, social, and governance (ESG)– to find the best companies in each group. Just like Personal Capital’s core portfolio offerings, the new Socially Responsible Personal Strategy offers exposure to all six major liquid asset classes and individual stocks and uses Personal Capital’s Smart Weighting methodology to balance exposure to size, style, and sectors within the U.S. equity asset class.

In addition to the ESG factors, clients can use advanced customizations to exclude any stock or sector that they do not want to hold. In fact, 30% of Personal Capital portfolios do so. In total, the company manages more than $6.5 billion in assets and tracks over $500 billion for 1.6 million registered users. In the past 12 months, Personal Capital has nearly doubled its assets under management. At the end of last month, the company surpassed $6.5 billion in assets under management with an average client balance of more than $430,000.

Founded in 2009, Personal Capital debuted its One-Click Investment Proposals at FinovateSpring 2014. At FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, the company’s Ehsan Lavassani, Founding Engineer and Chief Engineering Officer, and Ravi Gundlapalli, Director of Frontend Engineering, gave a presentation titled, Data-Driven Account Opening. Last October, Personal Capital launched an education planning tool to help investors set aside money for the cost of college. Later that month, the company was named a Top 100 digital tech company in Colorado.