Sustainable investing platform Ethic Adviser looks to raise $1m Seed round

Ethic Adviser, a sustainable investing solution for financial advisers, investment brokers and accountants, is looking to raise $1 million in Seed funding to expand the globally.

The fintech was developed by Tom Culver last year, before launching in March, to give advisers a SAAS solution offering specialist sustainable investing tools and information.

“With the acceleration of consumers wanting sustainable investing solutions, advisers have been left desperately underserved by their industry,” he said.

“They are stuck between clients wanting sustainable options, and product providers delivering sometimes questionable products, rather than accurate and reliable information or support for Advisers to provide advice to their clients.”

Culver previously founded the ethical investing platform Goodments, which he sold to ASX-listed Douugh for $1.5 million all scrip deal.

The Ethic Adviser platform processes thousands of ESG data points and converts it to understandable recommendations for both advisers and their clients.

Advisers can also access a range of research tools including the comparison tool, insights module and advice outputs to generate post-client meeting and compliance requirements.

Culver has signed a partnership with Count Financial to use Ethic Adviser with its 300 financial advisers.

Count Financial’s head of practice development & research, Simon Jeffery-Bilich said they’d seen huge shifts in client preferences for sustainable and responsible investing.

“Increasingly, clients will be quite specific around the sectors in which they do not want to invest, often for very personal reasons,” he said.

“We’ve found this aspect is often time consuming for advisers. For this reason, the Ethic Adviser platform is a great enabler for advisers to proactively understand client preferences, get insight on investment options, and deliver great client outcomes.

“I think the time will come where sustainable and responsible investing becomes the norm. The Ethic Adviser platform helps advisers get in front of this conversation with their clients and add value to both clients and their firm.”

Culver said Ethic Adviser is now looking to raise $1 million in a Seed round for its next growth stage.

“Our strong foundations for success have been laid by finding market fit with our MVP product,” he said.

“As such the Company is raising capital to optimise the product experience, increase sales in Australia and expand to new markets. Ethic Adviser is raising $1 million to support the next 12 months of operations and scale and have a clear path along proven metrics to very strong ARR within12 months.”