Investing with a Racial Equity Lens

Zevin Asset Management was founded on the belief that active investors have an important role to play in advocating for social and environmental progress. Since our founding in 1997, we have widened our panorama of risk and opportunity by conducting research on corporate environmental, social, and governance-related impacts to inform our investment approach. Through active ownership, we encourage companies to adopt more sustainable business practices that we believe make sense in the long term. 

We describe racial equity investing as a lens applied to companies to identify and change inequitable policies, practices, and behaviors to advance meaningful racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion. We accomplish our work through research and stakeholder collaboration, shareholder engagements, submission of shareholder proposals, proxy voting, and public policy outreach and support.

Q3 2023 Market Outlook

“We are navigating by the stars under cloudy skies.” That was how Jerome Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, recently described the central bank’s task of taming inflation. We can’t think of a more accurate way to describe the central bank’s job, but those words don’t exactly instill confidence in the single most important organization responsible for steering the largest economy in the world.

Root Out Impact Washing in Your Portfolio

Time and time again, I am disappointed to see the actively blurred lines between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, values-aligned investing, and impact. By conflating these concepts, investors who are intent on making a difference with their investments are often misled. Taken in by false promises of the positive change their investments can create, investors can be persuaded by impact washing to allocate assets to products or strategies that do not actively create change.

Q3 2023 Impact Update

This quarter, Zevin Asset Management continued to share our perspective on racial equity investing, filed our first resolution of the season, and sent letters to pharmaceutical companies and their trade associations to advance health equity. In other news, we continue to defend corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives against political headwinds and have joined global efforts to protect our fragile biodiversity.

Millennials’ Angst

The recent trend in U.S. residential housing conditions is downright discouraging for those trying to buy a new home, and even worse for those looking to buy their first home. Ongoing supply shortages in the housing market have pushed the median price for an existing single-family home 50% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been lifting interest rates for 18 months in its effort to cool inflation, which has resulted in a 23-year high in mortgage rates. Rising house prices coupled with rising mortgage rates mean housing affordability has become very unaffordable.