Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Be Invested. In a better world.

The Inhance funds have now officially morphed into the IA Clarington SRI funds, which will be offered nationally through IA Clarington's distribution network, as well as through Vancity branches. The Inhance fund family, Vancity Circadian fund family and Vancity Perspectives portfolio solutions family have been merged with funds managed by IA Clarington and represent approximately $92 million in assets under management (AUM), bringing IA Clarington's total AUM to well over $7 billion.

As previously reported, the investment management team at Inhance, including Steve MacInnes and Dermot Foley, has moved to Vancity and will continue to manage the funds for IA Clarington. "We were very pleased to be able to maintain the Inhance portfolio management team," said David Scandiffio, President of IA Clarington. "They are recognized leaders in this category and bring a vast amount of experience to the table."

IA Clarington has integrated the marketing of the SRI funds into the existing IA Clarington approach, which I think sends a message that these are funds for everyone. To their overarching advertising theme ‘Be Invested.’ they have added ‘In a better world.’

Rob Taylor, IA Clarington’s Vice President, National Accounts and Business Development talked about how they developed the campaign. “We could look at SRI from an outsider’s perspective, and ask ‘what does the investor want?’. We thought you should be able to feel good about where you invest your money. We wanted to focus on the underlying benefit of these funds, and then portray that in three words, and that’s how we came up with ‘Feel Good Investing’.”

The website is up and running for the launch of the funds and more marketing material will be available soon, featuring the same imagery and language that’s on the website now. “It can be a challenge for advisors to get information across to their clients. The industry spends a lot of time on numbers, but we think images and pictures and stories are a more powerful way to reach investors,” continued Mr. Taylor, “and that’s how we intend to build our campaign.”

‘Introducing Feel Good Investing – FGI – and the IA Clarington Inhance family of feel good investment funds.
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) redefined: SRI is FGI.’

Do we really need another acronym? I don’t know. But a non SRI fund company demonstrating a commitment to SRI – that’s something we need more of.

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