More Money Podcast - 182 Making an Impact with Your Investments - Trish Nixon, Managing Director & Head of Capital at CoPower

Episode Date: February 7, 2019

Since it’s launch week for Season 8 of the Mo’ Money Podcast, I’ve got a bonus episode for you! Last season, CoPower sponsored my podcast. So, I thought it would be fun to bring on Trish Nixon, Managing Director & Head of Capital of CoPower, to discuss impact investing with me. You may or may not have heard about impact investing before, but that could be because it goes by so many different names: socially responsible investing, green investing, sustainable investing, ethical investing (you get the picture). No matter what the name, what this episode is about is being a more mindful and conscious investor. You see, with every dollar you invest you are saying you want the companies you’re investing in to become more profitable and successful. There’s nothing wrong with that…unless the companies you’re investing in aren’t actually very ethical or don’t align with your personal values. That’s why we need to be more aware of what companies are in our mutual funds or ETFs. We need to see if there’s something we don’t like, then do something about it. One thing you can do is negative screening. It’s basically a way to take out the worst offenders in your portfolio, or find a portfolio that doesn’t include them. This is obviously easier if you’re a DIY investor because you have more control with what companies you invest in, but as you’ll see below there are a ton of big banks and robo-advisors that are offering more SRI portfolios now too. Socially Responsible Investment Products To give you a better sense of what kind of socially responsible investments exist, here’s a quick list of model portfolios and investment products that are considered SRI. Green Bonds – CoPower Equity Index Funds for the Socially Responsible – Canadian Couch Potato Organic Couch Potato Model Portfolio – Sustainable Economist Fossil Fuel Free Model Portfolio – Sustainable Economist Easy as Pie Model Portfolio – Sustainable Economist Vanguard Cheap AF ESG Model Portfolio – Sustainable Economist Socially Responsible Portfolio – ModernAdvisor Socially Responsible Portfolio – Wealthsimple Socially Responsible Mutual Funds & ETFs – RBC Global Asset Management Socially Responsible ETFs – BlackRock For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/182 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 182 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Welcome to this bonus episode, the second episode this week. I'm so excited to share with you because it is on a topic I've only, I think, had one episode sort of about this topic, which is we're going to be talking about investing, but specifically the kind of niche, which really it shouldn't be a niche. And we'll talk about more of that in the episode, you'll get what I'm talking about, but socially responsible investing or impact investing. Basically, you've probably heard people talk about green investing or just being more socially responsible in terms of what kind of investment products you choose. Let me just kind of preface this. It's important to invest. Absolutely.

However, we need to also be more aware of what we're actually investing in. What companies are we basically saying, yes, I support you with our dollars. I think a lot of the times we're very focused on our returns and our financial goals, and probably don't spend enough time really knowing what we're investing in. And honestly, and I'm not saying that I'm not guilty of this, I 100% am and I something that I want to do something about. But if you were to look in some of your portfolios and see, you know, what kind of companies that you're currently investing in through, you know, your index funds or ETFs or mutual funds, you'd probably find a couple of companies that you don't feel so good about. I'm talking about, you know, maybe companies

that are, you know, have to do with like cigarettes or oil or guns or things that maybe don't align with your values and don't make you feel so good. And yet you are investing in those companies. So they are basically helping them become more profitable. So we need to talk more about this and what we can do as investors to kind of make an impact, make some good positive change in our world through our investing dollars. And that is what we are going to be talking about in this episode. I will be joined by Trish Nixon. She's the Managing Director and Head of Capital at Copower. You probably know that name, Copower, because they were a sponsor for last season of this show. And so we're going to

do a deep dive into what impact investing and green investing, what that actually means and looks like so we can start making some better decisions with our investments. So you are going to love this episode. I can't wait to share with you. And yeah, I'm going to do that right now. Let's get to that interview with Trish Nixon at Copower. Well, thank you, Trish, so much for joining me on the show. I'm excited to chat with you. Thank you very much for having me here. Yeah. Well, I would love to start this off with getting to know you a little bit more and then how you ended up working with Copower or for Copower rather. Sure. Absolutely. So I've been working in the world of impact investing for the last eight or nine years.

Oh, wow. Yeah, sort of an interesting journey. I grew up in a household full of investment bankers. Oh, that sounds fun. Super fun, super fun. But was sort of always the black sheep wanting to kind of carve out my own path and was always really interested in, you know, more in dedicating my career to more altruistic endeavors, really interested in government policy, international relations and international development, you know, philanthropic sector. And somewhere along the way, I sort of melded my two worlds and, you know, came across this concept of social finance or impact investing, which tries to take the best of,

you know, the policy, philanthropy and business worlds to develop new solutions for society, really. So it really intrigued me, the opportunity to kind of apply business and finance acumen to solve social environmental problems. And so that's where the impact investment movement was really gathering momentum in sort of the 2007, I think the term was coined. And I think it was beginning of 2011 when I started getting involved in the space. And I joined an innovation center in Toronto called Mars Discovery District. It was launching their center for impact investing. And I had the opportunity to join and participate or be employed by kind of a capacity builder in the space.

So I spent a lot of my time working with investors, foundations and institutions and other types of investors looking to invest for social environmental impact, supporting new funds and companies that were raising financing or developing new financial tools to achieve both financial return and some sort of social or environmental impact. And it was there that I met the co-founders of CoPower. So I was running venture services for the Center for Impact Investing. And the two co-founders came to me as a client. They were launching this company focused on financing sustainable infrastructure and seeking, you know, melding the trends of impact investing and sustainable investing,

uh, uh, you know, online investment platforms being a way to increase accessibility, um, and developing really interesting financial products backed by low carbon infrastructure. So it was a really neat opportunity to say, Hey, I can really kind of dive in from, from capacity building into building something that actually building financial products that actually, you know, work for investors looking for these types of opportunities. I think that was during my time at Mars. One of the biggest challenges that I noticed was that there wasn't a lot of accessible product out there. Most players, most investors in this space were, again, you know, nonprofit foundations or ultra high net worth individuals, you know, other institutions starting to invest in the space. But there wasn't a lot of opportunities for people like myself to participate.

I remember going in, you know, looking at opportunities to invest my RRSP and even sustain socially responsible investment funds, and the opportunities were so limited. So Copower was, you know, the concept behind Copower was we know that there's a growing number of Canadians that really want to invest in our low-carbon future. There's great investment opportunities in markets that are, you know, very underserved by the financial community. You know, energy is kind of moving from big and dirty to smaller and more distributed. And there's a need for financing and investment firms to actually finance the deployment of proven clean energy technologies. And it's just not happening fast enough.

So Copara marries, you know, marries those two groups, team energy developers and projects that need financing and investors like myself, to be honest, that are looking for ways to do more with the money. Absolutely. No, I think you really, what struck me when you were saying that what you realized as you were learning more about this is that there isn't a lot of products out there

that are sustainable or impact investing or whatever you want to call it. And I think that's true. And I think kind of the problem now is that not only is there still kind of limited products out there, but because there had like for a while, there really wasn't anything for just like individual investors like you and me, when new things like Copower are coming up, a lot of people are very skeptical because they've never heard of this. I mean, I'll be honest. It was only in the last four or five years that I knew sustainable investing was a thing. I just thought there was investing and that was it. But then now more people are talking about it, especially younger

people, because we're realizing climate change is, and we're living in this time that we really need to do something. And we need to speak with not just, you know, recycling and reusing, but we need to use our investing dollars to make big change. What was, I guess, because you said impact investing was kind of coined in 2007, you got involved in 2011. What has been the change in your perspective, just being in a space from kind of, you know, that timeframe to now, now in 2019, has there been a lot of positive movement, a lot new, you know, new products out there, a lot more conversations, more people getting interested, or is it just, it's, it's going to be like a big journey, a long journey for us? Yeah, I think my answer is both. You know, I think that the awareness

of the opportunity to consider social environmental factors into your investment decisions, there's so much more awareness and there are correspondingly so many more products. And what's really interesting now too, if you, you know, look at whether we're talking about socially responsible investing, kind of the broad umbrella that could include sustainable ETFs or negative screening and taking out companies that you might not want in your portfolio, like a tobacco company, all the way to more proactive impact investments, which might be saying, I'm investing in clean energy projects as one example, or investing in a company that I really believe in, the ability to do so is certainly greater. And the appetite to do so, I think, is a lot greater. There's definitely still challenges. I think one of the reasons that Copower developed a really interesting model. We have an online investment platform. We let Canadians come and

invest directly with us. So we're a registered exempt market dealer and you can come and purchase a green bond through Copower's secure online dashboard. The reason that we created our own distribution platform is that our financial systems aren't easily set up for kind of new product innovation. And especially when we're talking about private products. And a lot of impact investments are alternative investments, which is great because they can be really great diversifiers for your portfolio, you know, uncorrelated to stock market swings. But it means they're harder to distribute. And, you know, the opportunity to actually create a distribution platform and, you know, how much more accessible technology and web-based investing has certainly been sort of a conduit to seeing more opportunities exist.

But I think we still have a long way to go. You know, I don't think we're at the point where, you know, someone walks in to talk to their investment advisor at a bank. Yeah. You know, they're not, it's going to take some pushing and prodding and asking a lot of questions to develop a, you know, ethical or sustainable or whatever you want to call it investment portfolio. I think the key is that more people are asking those questions. Yeah. people are asking those questions and more people talk to their advisors or you know demand that their banks have products that they believe in or that they they can see more information on the environmental social governance um uh features of different investment opportunities the more

information gets becomes available the more people can make better decisions um and we're seeing a lot of data that demonstrates that sustainable investing, socially responsible investing, impact investing, there's not a return trade-off. Right. important for reducing risk. You know, and oftentimes investing in new and different and smaller and private opportunities, you know, can yield some really attractive risk return opportunities. So more data, more data is key, I think, to develop a space and just, you know, again, pushing those advisors, pushing the banks, the mainstream distribution channels. The more demand they see from clients, the more they'll seek out impactful products to be on their shelf. Absolutely. You mentioned a few things earlier, and you can maybe remind me of what the terms you use. But what are some kind of, I'm not sure if they're products or just like different types of impact investment

products. So you mentioned there's one where it's like one that just doesn't have some of those kind of the negative impact ones or whatever. What are some things or some terms that people should familiarize themselves with? So if they are talking with their advisor or doing some more research, they kind of know what key terms to look for. Yeah, that's a really great question. And apologies if I... No, it's really great because it's like this information isn't... It's just not... For me too, and this is why I'm very interested in this space as well, is there's not a ton of information in the kind of mainstream media. You really have to do your digging. So it's like the more we talk about this and understand the key terms, just like you said, it's like, we can talk more to our financial advisors or know where to do our

research. So we can, you know, hopefully ask those questions or demand more products like this. So those products will become available. Yeah, absolutely. So generally, if, you know, there's, if you think about a values based portfolio, or, you know, a socially responsible investment portfolio, you're going to have different, different tools that help you, you know, create a, you know, a sound investment strategy and portfolio that is as good for society as you, as you, however you want to define that as you can make it. And so, um, generally, you know, we talk about responsible investing or socially responsible investing as an umbrella term that captures, um, uh, you know, a suite of different tools. Uh, one tool, um, is what's commonly referred to as negative screening. So that would be, that would include basically taking out the worst offenders, taking the worst offenders out of your portfolio.

So if you really don't want to be financing fossil fuels, so, you know, the divestment movement is sort of a clear example of that. You know, you can stop investing in oil companies, for example, or if you don't want to be buying stocks of companies that produce arms, you can take those some of those stocks out of your portfolio. Those are negative screens. which are, you know, when you look at environmental, social and governance data and and choose the best companies within each sector or, you know, within within, you know, we're includes financial stocks and commodities or energy stocks. So you're going to look at what are the best performers along social, environmental and governance factors within those categories. So there's ETFs and mutual funds that, you know, do both of those things. You can obviously create your own portfolio by applying your own screen. So there's different tools out there that let you do that. And, you know, a third category is shareholder activism. So part of the divestment movement, and this is usually done by larger institutional investors,

but, you know, a lot of some pension funds, for example, that have participated in the investment movement may choose not to actually sell all their oil stocks, but rather become an active shareholder. So, you know, to improve the behavior of the fossil fuel companies that they're invested in. So those are some tools generally that exist within the public markets world. Oh, those are interesting. Yeah, I'll be honest, I've never heard of any of those. And that makes but they're very simple to understand. Thanks so much for defining them, because I think those are really helpful. And as you mentioned, so these are once you kind of understand how these terms

work, it's relatively easy to find on your own some of these products that you mentioned. Yeah, more so and And, you know, every product is going to look different. But absolutely, you know, if you, you know, search for a socially responsible ETF or a fossil fuel free investment product, you know, those are, you'll start to see kind of some of these terms and understand how the product, the fund manager, the manufacturer is kind of defining how they look at social responsibility in their investment strategy. And then I'll just very quickly kind of comment on the kind of fourth, I guess, term that I was using, which is impact investing. So typically what I just talked about is more related to the public markets.

And then when we talk about impact investing, it doesn't have to be private markets, but a lot of impact investment opportunities are within the private markets. Those are opportunities to really proactively invest in solutions that generate a positive impact and financial return. So that's where we would define co-power bonds. So we offer a vehicle for investors to invest in a pool of loans or portfolio of loans that are invested directly into clean energy infrastructure projects across Canada. And so, you know, our first investment criteria is does this

project earn its revenue either from selling clean power or reducing energy consumption so that the financial returns and the impact returns are intrinsically linked. And so that's one example. And there's other examples like affordable housing funds, microloan funds that sort of do the same thing where their raison d'etre is to invest in something that generates financial return by creating positive impact. Yeah, that sounds awesome. So if someone was... Well, actually, my first question was, so Copower has green bonds. Are there other types of bonds like the ones Copower has? It seems like Copower is one of the few companies that I'm aware of. Is this special to Copower? Or

is this something like this is a product in its own right? Green bonds is a thing. Other companies are doing this throughout Canada. Yeah, so we're pretty unique in our model. But there are some comparables, you know, if you search green bonds, you might find Copower, but you might also find, you know, publicly traded green bonds. The World Bank issues green bonds that invest in global clean energy infrastructure. Toronto Dominion Bank has issued green bonds in the past to back by some of their more sustainable investments. A lot of those opportunities are primarily available only to larger

institutional investors. Many of them have kind of a green mandate or a mandate to purchase green bonds. So most people don't have widespread access to those types of green bonds, whereas co-powers are specifically designed for a retail investor. You know, we're selling directly to individuals. And so the model is a little bit different. We're certainly unique in the structure and the fact that we, you know, we're not doing a single bond issuance, you know, backed by a specific set of projects. Rather, we were continually raising more money through bonds to invest in more and more clean energy projects. And we're set up

basically just to do that. There's a couple other, you know, similar types of opportunities. There's some cooperatives across the country, the Newville Energy Co-ops that allow their co-op members to invest in their clean energy projects that they own. So there's definitely some other comparables, but our model is pretty unique in this space. And there's a couple of other US comparables as well. There's groups like Wonder Capital that also has an online investment platform and helps people invest in solar

assets across the United States as one example. Okay. And that's probably why I think when I talk to listeners of this show and just people about investing, the whole idea of green bonds is very new to them. And it could be because even though they have been in existence, maybe not in a way where individuals like you and me can actually participate. Exactly. You're probably not being offered opportunities to invest in green bonds, you know, when you go to your discount brokerage or to your investment advisor. Exactly. So let's talk a little bit about how these green bonds work with specifically Copower. So you mentioned, so if someone were to purchase some green bonds, they're not just investing in like one specific project. It's like a bunch of different projects. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. So for two reasons, you know, sometimes we get questions,

well, can we choose which projects we invest in? We decided that it's much better for the investor and it's much more efficient to actually create a pool of vehicles. So if you buy a co-power green bond today, you're investing in a pool of about 1200 individual clean energy projects across the country. And as we issue more bonds and invest in more projects, that portfolio continues to grow. That's pretty cool. And so would you, and this is probably a very simple question, but technically green bonds, if someone was like trying to figure out how would I fit this into my portfolio, this would kind of go into that fixed income part of your portfolio. Yeah, fixed income and or alternatives. So a lot of individual investors don't have a large

allocation to alternative investments. So you know, those can be things like real estate investments or hedge funds or private credit. So we're sort of a private credit product. So yeah, so it fits more in your fixed income slice. Our six-year bond offers a 5% annual interest rate, which is pretty competitive for a fixed income product. But it's also an alternative investment product because, again, it's not traded on a public market, which means that you have to buy and hold the bond until it's maturity. But the other benefit, because there's no resale, there's no secondary market, it's uncorrelated. There's no volatility associated with the bond because it's not exposed to market sentiment. Exactly. So what are kind of, you know, probably a popular question you get too,

is like what are some of the risks involved? Like nothing's perfect. What are some of the things that people should be aware about these types of investments? Yeah, absolutely. So all investments, of course, have different risks and features. And I'll start by saying that certainly if you're considering investing, you should read our offering memorandum, which is available on our site and covers the finer details and risks associated.

But I'll keep it high level for this conversation. So we do a lot to try and mitigate risk for our investors. And one risk is associated with the underlying investment opportunities. If we're lending to a project we need to we want that, we want that loan to be paid back and that interest to be paid. And so there's, there's risks associated with the underlying projects. We do a lot to mitigate that risk by focusing primarily on projects that are already built and operating, generating revenue, have good contracts in place, and we build

in debt service reserve accounts and other features to mitigate the specific project risk. We also use technologies that are proven. So there's potentially performance risks associated with the projects. Will they generate as much clean power as anticipated in the case of this solar project, for example. But we are using technologies or investing in technologies that are highly proven. So we can do a lot to monitor and mitigate that risk. And then, of course, by investing in a larger portfolio, it means the impact of a potential default on one project, you know, might not necessarily invest your return as a bondholder, affect your return as a bondholder, because you're exposed to a much broader pool. But that's one thing to consider. You know, another, another feature is, you know,

the clean energy investment market will co-power the, be able to continue to lend to, to more projects that are within our investment criteria and our target markets. If we're not there, you know, if for some reason we wound down the portfolio because we weren't able to do so, you could actually get your money back faster than anticipated. So that's a risk that, you know, investors typically are, find acceptable. But it's something to be aware of, you know,

changing market dynamics could change the repayment schedule associated with the bonds. And, you know, another thing to be aware of is that as a private issuer, we have, we're subject to fewer reporting requirements than a publicly traded company. So there may be less information available. And yeah, those are some of the key and, you know, Copower is still a relatively young company. We have about a five-year track record and, you know, no defaults. And all of our investments have performed as expected.

However, Copower as a manager has a limited operating history. And so that's also, you know, something to be aware of. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, we structured the product so that the bonds are issued by a special corporation that owns and is secured by all the underlying loans. And so, you know, to that effect, Copower is managing the portfolio, but ultimately the bondholders interest in principle is invested in these real infrastructure assets that are that are part of the portfolio. Awesome. Yeah. Kind of like you said, it's it's so new and Copower itself is a very new company. But I feel like I'm hopeful that this conversation that we're having in like, you know, 20 years will be like, oh, you know, that was when it just started happening. Because I feel like this is just very reminiscent of when people, I feel like maybe just five years ago, really, when kind of robo-advisors started popping up and people were like, what is this thing called

index investing or ETFs? People were just like, I've never heard of this. I don't trust it. And now everyone's kind of on board. And I read some article lately that now ETFs are looking to kind of outpace mutual funds and people purchasing them. So I feel like a lot of people are very kind of always like, what could potentially happen? Will I lose all my money? This is so new. But kind of like you said, it's like once you have all that kind of information and you understand, don't just invest all of your money into this. Like you want to have a diversified portfolio and understand what that means and all that stuff and understand, yes, there's risks for every single type of investment product out there, not just these types of products. Then it's not so scary. That's just like always the sentiments I'm getting from people is just that just like the I, the lack of information and the newness of it is just kind of a bit worrying, but I think, I think with anything

new, there's always a, um, a perception of risk. Yeah. And I think that's one of the biggest, you know, I was talking about more data and more metrics being available with, you know, socially responsible investing and impact investing. Um, it takes a while for individual products, but also kind of movements and concepts to build a track record. And we're starting to see an inflection point where there's more positive data available. You know, there's more, there's a longer track record for investment opportunities like ours. And, you know, that obviously starts to make it easier

for kind of the early majority to start to participate because they can actually move from a point of perceived risk to, okay, we understand the risk return impact opportunities associated with these types of products. And, oh, they're not that different from, you know, non-impactful products, if you will. Exactly, exactly. You mentioned earlier, too, about, you know, obviously, if someone is interested in going this route, investing some of their money into this, they don't just have to use a taxable account. There's now, you can use a TFSA or an RRSP, an RESP and an RRIF. That's

always a hard one to get. Right? Is that true? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so our bonds are eligible for all registered accounts. We in order to invest in copower bonds through registered account, you know, we're not a custodian of registered accounts. So, you know, we can work with investors through their current investment advisors or some banks, not all banks, will hold private placements in registered accounts for their clients. We have a lot of clients investing through Questrade. That's, you know, a great way to do a self-directed investment in a registered account.

Yeah, so we've managed to make that possible for our investor base, which I think is huge. Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. For me, like when I learned, I'm like, Oh, okay, that's for some reason, like that made it like, Oh, this is a legit thing. This is good. And that's could be another thing that people think about, like, if it's offered in a registered account, okay, so I think this thing has legs, like this will be around for a little while. There's some infrastructure associated with, yeah, with the product and, you know, work done on that front. And yeah, and as I mentioned, Copower is a registered exempt market dealer. So, you know, we've certainly gone through the time and effort to become registered to work with the securities commissions effort to become registered,

to work with the securities commissions, to make sure that, again, the product is accessible to a lot of Canadians, but also has all of the compliance features worked in to make sure that we're understanding and our investors are understanding who it's suitable for and how to purchase it through different channels. For sure. And how many, and I don't know if you know this

number off the top of your head, so you can always just give me an average, but in general, what is the kind of popularity or how many investors do you have from kind of the beginning of Copower to now? Are you seeing that more and more people are interested in it yeah absolutely so we have last i checked which was probably a month ago so we probably have about 50 more investors but we have um we have over 600 individual investors uh so 600 unique investors a lot of those investors have actually you know reinvested or invested multiple times as they've gotten familiar with GoPower. And that includes, you know, people investing, you know, $5,000 from their kitchen table across the country through to, you know, Vancity Credit Union is an investor with us, you know, an insurance company, a number of foundations across the country. So, yeah, we have quite a range of different types of investors.

Yeah, for some reason, I just thought, oh, it's probably largely individuals, but it's individuals and institutions. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's more and more institutions that are sort of building in an impact mandate and looking at different products like ours and have been participating with us really from the get go. So, yes, it's really exciting to see as well. That's very exciting. So what I know you guys are still very new, but what are what is your kind of 10 year plan or what's your kind of big lofty goal for um co-power oh that's a great question so we have um uh so in the last couple years well in the last you know uh four or five years and and most of it has been really in the last two years um we've raised about uh over 30 million um for clean energy uh infrastructure across the country uh we want to be moving hundreds and hundreds of millions.

So, you know, as we continue to grow, we want to continue to grow our bond portfolio, continue to finance the same types of projects that we have been. So, you know, geothermal, solar, energy efficiency, retrofits, and other renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. And we want to add new products to our portfolio. So we want to be a leading asset manager for sustainable infrastructure. And we want to offer our green bonds.

We want to offer clean energy equity project or funds um we want to uh you know get into other verticals like sustainable real estate and you know sustainable agriculture and offer a suite of products um that all types of investors across the country um you know can easily participate in um to advance again you, meet different risk return expectations while achieving the impact that they're seeking. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited just for the whole idea of sustainable or impact investing to become more kind of commonplace because I think a lot of people are very focused on, I just need to start investing, which is very important. But then I think people also need to know that there's options out options out there you don't just have to invest in the big companies that are like oil companies or tobacco companies

that most people have no idea are in their portfolios it's like there's lots of other options out there but unfortunately right now it's just like we're kind of at that start where it's like you kind of have to do the research you have to kind of uh empower you well you have to listen to this podcast and learn about it absolutely Absolutely. No, but you're right. It's very much, you know, a lot of people who are doing this and there are great investors and, you know, how they're activating

their portfolio for impact, however that may look. But yeah, it's definitely, it takes a little bit of extra work, but I think it's also, you know, really rewarding for going through the effort. We published a report last year that really looked at the carbon impact of investment portfolios. Oh, that'd be interesting.

Yeah, yeah. It's called The Dirty Secret in Your Investment Portfolio. Uh-oh. It's on The Dirty Secret in Your Investment Portfolio. It's on our blog. But basically, it looked at, you know, a lot of people are thinking about personal steps they can take to mitigate their carbon footprint. You know, buying less or, you know, trying an electric vehicle or eating vegetarian. And so we looked at, we compared some of those actions to, you know, a typical standard public investment portfolio. It's really interesting to see, you know, obviously depending on the size of your investment portfolio, but the impact is really quite staggering.

So I think if people do just start to think about, you know, when they're investing something, they own it. And, you know, again, across, as we talked about, you know, a well-diversified portfolio, you know, different asset classes. Just think about how can you do a little bit better? How can you, you know, reduce your negative impact or increase your positive impact? And I think having that mentality, you know, it becomes, um, comes a lot more manageable when you just say like, Oh, how can I make the best decision for the planet or for people or, you know, for, for whatever, um, uh, things are important to you. How can I, how can I choose between two products that,

um, you know, are a little bit different and choose the one that I think is better for society. It becomes a lot more manageable. Yeah, no. And I think you, you mentioned a lot of great things throughout this, uh, interview, just that, you know, first and foremost, if you want to do, you know, be really cognitive of what kind of investment products you choose, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to forfeit any returns being an impact investor. And I've read that there's lots of data out there that says the same thing, that you're not giving up returns just by, you know by investing in these kind of new sustainable investments.

And just I think it's really, really important not just for people to start investing, but that's always very important. But if you are currently investing, take a good look at your portfolio right now and understand what's actually in it. Because most people have gone through the steps of like, oh, yeah, I'm using a robo-advisor. I went through a bank. I know what these mutual fund names or ETF names are. I have a sort of idea of what the top companies are. But really take some time to look at what's in there. Because I did the same thing, and I was actually surprised to see some of the companies in there. And I just had no idea. Because sometimes they make it very difficult for you. If you want to look at the full list,

there might be hundreds or thousands of companies in there. So, but it's important because like you said, as important as it is to like, you know, maybe eat vegetarian a couple of times a week or, you know, stop using plastic bags or whatever. Also being really just mindful of what your investments are and where your dollars are going. I think that probably has a bigger impact. Exactly. I think, you know, conscious consumerism is something that we've seen a huge rise of over the last decades. And it's only natural that that'll extend to our investment portfolio. So it's been really exciting, again, in the last, you know, just under a decade that I've been kind of really immersed in and working in this space. It's been really exciting to see

the progress that's been made. And I think we'll keep seeing more and more of that. Yeah. Oh, I like that. Conscious investor. Like, let's be conscious investors. I like that. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Trish, for joining me on the show. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Where can more people find out more information about some of the stuff we talked about in Copower? Yeah, absolutely. So copower.me, copower.me is our website. As I mentioned, you can find out about our products there. We have lots of information and it's easy to talk to one of our investment representatives as well. And I would encourage you to check out our blog because we feature a lot of different content on sustainable investing, impact investing, a lot of these themes that we've

chatted about today. And that report, you mentioned that would be on the blog as well? It's on the blog. Yes. Perfect. It's called The Dirty Secret in Your Investment Portfolio. Perfect. Well, thank you so much again for joining me. It was a pleasure chatting with you. And that was episode 182 with Trish Nixon. She's the Managing Director and Head of Capital at Copower. To learn more about Copower and check out their blog and that report that we mentioned, go to copower.me. You'll also want to check out the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 182, because I'm going to link to a couple of things that we mentioned in this episode, but also I'm going to link to a blog

post that I wrote that really breaks down what co-powers, green bonds are all about, how they work. So you're definitely going to want to check that out. And of course, speaking of investing, if you want to become a more knowledgeable investor, if you want to become more confident about investing, if you want to start investing and you don't know where to start, well, you can start by signing up to my Investing Foundations for Canadians online course. You can find more information in the show notes or go directly to jessicamorehouse.com slash investing foundations. But it is an online course I made to basically get rid of this idea that investing is complicated and hard and you need to hire someone in order to understand how to invest or to invest for

yourself. You can 100% understand how to invest for yourself and just use a robo-advisor or, you know, invest in, you know, CoPowers, Greenbonds and know all the risks and all that means or become a DIY investor and use a discount brokerage to do so. You can be a totally informed investor and all it takes is taking, you know, some time out of your day and maybe, you know, just stopping the Netflix and chilling a little bit and just dedicating some time to educating yourself about it. Again, if I can do it, anyone can do it. Because, you know, four years ago, I didn't really know much about investing and I was so embarrassed about it, which is why I'm like, no, the answer

to that, the solution is that is to arm myself with information and facts. And so I spent several years really educating myself about investing and so much so that I felt comfortable finally putting all of the information that I learned, all of the courses that I took and put it into this course called Investing Foundations for Canadians. So anyways, I just wanted to share that in case you didn't know about it. But before I let you go, I want to share a few shout outs from some amazing people who left me some iTunes reviews. So the first review is from MessengerUser underscore 24 from Canada. Great podcast for young women learning about finances. I have enjoyed many episodes of this podcast, particularly the latest on retirement and pensions, episode 180, if you want to check

that one out. It couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I enjoy this financial podcast because it has diverse topics and doesn't only focus on paying off debt. Keep the episodes coming. Well, thank you so much for that review. Next, I've got one from XOXOTdub from Canada. I recently found this podcast on iTunes and I love it. It's easy to find a plethora of financial advice for Americans, right? There's so many freaking, I mean, it's great, but for us Canadians, not so much. So it was nice to finally find financial advice and tips for those who are Canadian and more specifically those in Ontario. I've learned a lot and I'm learning a lot and I highly recommend this podcast. Thank you so much. Okay, one more and then I'll let you go. This one is from 1135 from Canada. Wonderful podcast,

lots of different characters and opportunities to learn new things. Looking forward to learning more. Well, thank you so much for all of your reviews. If you want to get a shout out on a future episode, all you have to do is take two seconds out of your day. It is literally so easy. And just leave me a review and I'm going to give you a shout out, read your review on a future episode. And I'll love you forever. So you'll be in my good books forever. Thanks for listening. I'll see you back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode of the Mo Money Podcast. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.