BRI Part 2: Screening Technologies

Intro: Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical Worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters. Shawn: Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad that you decided to join us today. If you’re on YouTube watching this, I would ask that you please subscribe to this channel, especially if you like content that is on finance and from a Christian perspective. Bob: If you’re a podcast listener, you’re going to want to go watch the YouTube because we’re going to have these reports that we’re going to show. Shawn: If you are listening to this episode you’re welcome to still listen to it on our podcast directories, but it probably would be a little bit better of an episode visually. What we’re going to do real quick is I’m going to go over a recap. This is a part two of our Biblically Responsible Investing series, and is a recap from part one, for those of you who did not get a chance to watch or listen to that. Last time we covered the definition of Biblically Responsible Investing, which is a type of Christian values-based investing that seeks to align in investors holdings with biblical principles. Another term for that could be faith-driven investing. It is aligning your investments with companies that support Christian and Biblical teachings while avoiding companies that do not. BRI is pro-life, pro-family, and pro God. It gives light to darkness. Then we also covered the history of Biblically Responsible Investing or BRI, and we covered how BRI is not ESG. Finally we covered the many BRI investment choices today. There are over 34 BRI ETFs and mutual funds to choose from, plus hundreds of stocks and bonds. Again, BRI is Biblically Responsible Investing, so we don’t get lost in the acronyms. I would definitely encourage you to go back and review part one if you did not watch or hear it yet. Onto you, Bob. Bob: Today we’re going to cover the positive screens for Biblically Responsible Investing, or like we say BRI, the negative screens for BRI, and the technologies we use to screen for Biblically Responsible Investing with actual example. The positives are we seek out above average best what we call in-class companies in the following areas: Number one, we look at their business model. That’s their business products, their services, and operations. How they’re structured in a way that benefits rather than exploits their customers. Shawn: Number two, we have product integrity and innovation. Creates the company, creates products and services which are helpful, and create value rather than extract value or harm users. Bob: Next we look at how the company is run at their corporate governance like policies and behaviors regarding executive compensation, ethical dealings, board management, etc. Shawn: Number four is human capital. This is related to policies and behaviors regarding equitable employee management. Bob: Then their social impact, the impact and influence on society as a company and communities in which the company operates. Shawn: Number six, supply chain impact, influence on society and communities in which the company operates. kind of similar to the social. Bob: Number seven, and we believe this strongly in the environment, if you love God’s creation, you want to take care of the creation. I mean, if you love the creator, you want to take care of the creation. This measures the company’s impact on the environment, including air, water, and land. Shawn: Then the final one on the positives is sustainable energy use and production. Measures the company’s use and production of sustainable energy. Bob: The negatives, and this is really how Biblically Responsible Investing started out. In beginning it just looked at the negatives. Now we look at the positives too, so that’s why we covered the positives first. Shawn: Now we look at the negatives. Bob: The negatives, if the company is involved in exposure to any of these areas, we strive to stay away from investing in that company. Number one is pornography. The manufacture, sale, or distribution of pornography/ pornographic content. You will be very surprised to find many of your large Fortune 500 companies are involved in this. Shawn: Number two, alcohol manufacturer or sale of alcoholic beverages. Bob: Number three, if they produce tobacco in any way, manufacturer, or sell tobacco products. Shawn: Gambling, whether the ownership or operation of gambling facilities, either physical or internet based. Bob: As an example, we’re not going to own any hotels in Vegas. Number five is bioethics. Involvement in the business or promotion of abortion, including… I never can say that one good. Shawn: I think it’s abortifacient. Bob: Abortion drugs. Embryonic stem cell research or philanthropy. If they’re giving any money to Planned Parenthood. Shawn: Number six is human rights. Known human rights violations such as employing children, slave labor, human trafficking, discrimination, and things like that. Bob: That has a lot to do with your international companies. Not here. Number seven, the LGBTQIA+ 27 other genders activism. Corporations that use shareholder dollars to push a social agenda such as this alienating their customers investors with alternative viewpoints. We really believe there’s some good scriptural principles. We’re going to share a lot of that in part three, but 2 Corinthians 6:17 tells us to, “Come out and be separate; touch no unclean thing and I will receive you.” This is very important when it comes to BRI, and why we feel this is a scriptural basis for that. Shawn: Then Exodus 20:13-14, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery.” Bob: That comes under the screening of pro-life. We want to be pro-life and not invest in abortion clinics and adultery. Shawn: As well as the pornography. Like Jesus said, if you even lust after a woman in your heart, you’ve committed adultery. Bob: Psalms 139:13 is another very pro-life scripture that we believe goes with investing. “For you created my inmost being you; knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Now we’re going to get to the technologies that we use with Biblically Responsible Investing. Shawn: Researching companies on the internet and then verifying them by using things like the evaluator online screening tool. Which is a paid program, and anyone can subscribe to that, but it is a little more expensive. Then there’s also the Inspire Insight tool, which is actually has a free version. You can do a lot of screenings. I’m not sure if there’s actually a limit on the screenings. They’re paid version gives you a little more access to some extra tools, but those are two really great examples. They’re both very stringent on their own. Bob: The evaluator is what I call the original. This is what I was using back in like the nineties when I started this. The evaluator really looks at the negative screens, like it says, “come out and be separate, touch no unclean thing.” Then Inspire came along a couple years ago and they’re using Biola University to help them with this. They look for the positive screens as well. We like that because we want to invest in the positive while avoiding the the negative. Let’s look at some of these examples. We’re going to pull this up on the screen. Shawn: The first one we’ve got Bob, Vanguard 500 index is very common. Just as a quick cover our bases for compliance purposes. The holdings and funds that we’re going to be showing on screen, none of these are an actual recommendation to purchase. It’s not… Bob: to buy our sell. Shawn: You need to do your own research or work with your own advisor. This first one, Vanguard 500, Bob, I’ll kind of go through this if you want to just break this down a little bit further. Bob: I will because I’ve been using this report for years and years, so you want me to do that? Shawn: Yeah, go ahead. I’ll just kind of scroll through for you. Bob: What this is saying is when you invest in that Vanguard 500 index fund, it has 48% of the companies in that fund are involved in the abortion industry in some way, form, or fashion. Either giving to the Planned Parenthood or involved in the embryonic stem cell research. Just things like that. Then you look down and you see alcohol, entertainment, gambling, and lifestyle. This shows how 65% of the companies in the S&P 500 index fund and this Vanguard 500 index fund are involved into LGBTQIA+. Like I say 27 other genders. That’s the latest I’ve heard. I don’t know how many genders there are. Makes it easy? Shawn: Yeah, I know. Bob: Man or wife. Shawn: I just say LGBT+ because I can’t keep track of all the acronyms. Bob: Then we got pornography. People were real surprised when they see, like, you’ll see down here where it says, you’ll see Apple, or you’ll see like Microsoft. You’re like, how are they involved in pornography? It has to do with the distribution of it over their networks. That’s what we mean by that. Shawn: It could be an example of one that in their, say Apple TV or something. Bob: Netflix is another example. Shawn: Netflix, things like that. Bob: Then we have the human rights campaign. This is something that came about later, Shawn. With the international we started looking at that and going, well, this is human slavery. You’re violating human rights. Shawn: Not only that, but you have companies who have operations, or manufacturing, or things like that in other countries. me of this would be US companies with overseas operations. They’re following the law of the country over there, even though it wouldn’t pass merit here in the United States. Bob: You can see on the screen here, you can see these top companies that we have here, and you’re like, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” Those are well known companies I recognize. There are still a lot of great companies to invest in, so don’t just think about the negative. There’s a still a lot of positive great companies to invest in. Shawn: Keep in mind too, whenever you see an evaluated report, the this is the top violating companies. These are not all of the companies within this particular holding. It only shows, I think it’s like top 15 or something like that. Bob: Let’s show a positive fund. We pulled up the Timothy Plan high dividend ETF. You notice no violations. If they do find one violation, they will sell that holding almost immediately, Shawn. I mean not almost, they will. The day that they find that out, they’ll turn around, or a lot of times they’ll give the company a chance to stop doing that. Shawn: Especially if have a larger exposure to it, because sometimes, and that’s kinda the other part of Biblically Responsible Investing. Bob: We’re going to talk about that next week. Shawn: The idea of shareholders using their voting rights to try to affect change within a company. If they’ve got that one violation, and especially if it was a more recent change, well yeah, we’ll get into that next week. Sorry. Bob: Then we wanted to show the Inspire, so we pop over to another website. The Inspire example of the Vanguard 500, they give us positive or a negative score so you’re looking for a positive score. Something like a plus 10 or a plus five. Shawn: Here you can see under environmental, they scored very well, very high on that. It kind of breaks it down into the different areas within environmental. Then if you want to, it’s kind of cool, you can click on some of these links here, and you can see which companies are actually involved within that holding for that. Then on the negative side, you’ve got, okay, what does this mean by social? Well, it’s broken down into LGBT+ philanthropy, legislation support, abortion promotion, LGBT promotion, and pornography. Then you’ve got the abortion drugs and stem cell research. It just kind of breaks all that down. Bob: It’s a fantastic program. Then we had the Inspire positive. Let’s look at a positive stock because we talked about some negatives. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell stock. Shawn: In this case, Vanguard had a negative 31. Anything that’s a negative number just means overall, hey, probably something you want to avoid from a Biblically Responsible Investing standpoint. Then if you have a company that’s got a positive score for their overall inspire impact, that’s a good potential option. In this case, they didn’t have any negative screenings that came up. They had multiple areas; environmental, social, and governance that came up as positives, positive screens. Bob: That was a 60, which is a very, very high score. Shawn: Here’s what it looks like on the Evaluator, or what they call their investigate, or investigation side. Again, you’ll see here, hey look… Bob: Zero violations. Shawn: They didn’t have any violations, so that’s good. Bob: Now the company just has to pass what we call, “pass the muster”. They have to pass for their financials. They got to look good financially. That’s why we’re not saying we would buy or sell this company. Once it’s made it through this process for BRI, then we can look at the company, is this a good company to buy or not? Shawn: Now it now has to pass the actual financials. Bob: All right, that’s going to do it for today as far as part two and how we use technology. Next week we’re going to cover why Biblically Responsible Investing is so extremely important, especially to a Christian. What’s the scriptural basis for being biblically responsible, and how BRI makes a difference in the marketplace. In learning about BRI, if this is stirring your heart, and you’d like to align your Christian faith and your biblical worldview with how you invest, then give us a call or text us at (830) 609-6986 during regular business hours. Or find out more by going to christianfinancialadvisors.com. That’s all for today. Shawn: You don’t want to miss part three which should be coming out next week, and we look forward to seeing you then. God bless. Outro: We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes, covering many financial topics from a Christian perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes. You can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Amazon Music to learn more about integrating your faith with your finances. Visit Christianfinancialadvisors.com or call (830) 609-6986. Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors, Inc DBA Christian Financial Advisors® also known as Christian Financial Advisors® Management Group, a registered investment advisor. Comments from today’s show for informational purposes only, and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the host Bob Barber and his guests. Bob does not provide tax advice and encourages you to seek guidance from a tax professional. 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