With the internet increasingly being used to spread misinformation, some have raised concerns around how this could impact clients and their investment choice, particularly when it comes to discussing complex topics such as environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing.
Discussing this on a panel at RIAA’s 2025 conference in Sydney on Wednesday, independent financial adviser and the director of Ethos ESG Nathan Fradley said advisers simply “can’t know everything”, so when clients come to them with questions about ESG, it’s important that they have experts they can reach out to.
“I’ve said this before, you can’t know everything. That’s kind of the point you’re a financial adviser. Running portfolios is difficult enough, because you should also be following strategy and clients and adding more to it, adding knowing everything about ESG into the mix is really difficult,” Fradley said.
“So, I think having, you know, BDMs on call is great.”
On top of this, Fradley suggested having digital pools of information that advisers can refer to when a client comes to them asking about something they aren’t fully across.
“Services like Altiorem, things like that, where you can either direct clients to that information or like, ‘I hear you, I’ll look into that for you’,” he said.
“Firstly, you don’t have to have an opinion on what their opinion is. And secondly, I think it’s probably important to position that not everything can be solved through capital, either. It’s nice to think we can.”
Fradley added: “It’s hearing them and then leaning on people. There’s great investment experts at different funds.”
Expanding on this, Charlotte O’Meara, the head of responsible investment for Challenger Limited, said “advisers don’t need to know everything”.
“They can’t. They can’t physically know everything about every aspect of their clients’ investments, every aspect of the strategy, but really lean on the super funds, lean on the fund managers,” O’Meara said at the event.
“They’ve got ESG teams, they’ve got experts. Call your BDM and ask for reporting, ask for information, but also look at what resources are out there.
“There’s a lot of research out there. Take your client’s issue, take your client’s comments, and explore it further, and really reach out to the ESG teams that are in your fund managers because they’ve got a wealth of research and information to help.”
With how complex the broad space of ESG can be for clients to wrap their heads around, the same is also true for advisers, so the question is: how much can advisers be expected to know when it comes to ESG?
To this point, Fradley said, “You’ve gotta ask yourself what your job is”, suggesting the need to consider what is a reasonable expectation for how much a single financial adviser can actually do.
“There’s gonna be financial advisers out there – I know some great ones – and they do investment portfolios. That’s what they do. And they’re in the weeds. And they might have different people in the organisation that have different areas of expertise,” Fradley said.
“An adviser can use tools like leafratings.org, which is the Ethical Advisers co-op. They can use Ethos.
“I can narrow down the universe, and I can identify when that client isn’t for me. I think that’s the other part, too. This client is really, really into this. Am I the right adviser for them, or do I find someone who is?”
