Ethos Reviews

Ethos is an ESG (environmental, social and governance) platform that allows you to invest money into companies and financial solutions that align with causes you care about, such as racial justice, climate action and LGBTQ equality. Ethos does this by providing access to credible information and tools to help you buy and invest purposefully.

Its mission is to help investors make informed decisions about the impact of their investments and the companies they do business with. It uses more than 260 credible metrics from noncorporate data sources, as well as data directly from corporations, to establish its company and fund ratings.

Ethos breaks its overall process down into three steps:

1. Set causes: You’ll select the causes you care about so that Ethos can generate an Impact Persona for you. Ethos will use this persona to rate how well various companies and investments fit your goals.
2. Assess impact: You can link your investment accounts from more than 12,000 banks, brokerages and other institutions to upload your portfolio and see the impact your money is currently making.
3. Improve impact: Ethos can then help find brands, companies and investments to assist you in getting your portfolio where you want it.

The process of getting started with Ethos may be different depending on whether you’re signing up as an individual or a firm. If you’re an individual, you’ll start with a three-minute Impact Assessment before getting access to some preliminary results.

If you wish to save your results, you’ll need to set up an online account with Ethos. At this stage, you can save your results as an individual or as a firm and get a seven-day free trial of all Ethos’ features.

Ethos’ solutions

Ethos offers solutions for a variety of different users. Individual investors will likely use the platform mostly for education, while professionals and institutions can use Ethos to work with clients and expand their businesses.

Ethos’ primary product is its platform, which performs a variety of functions, like:

• Impact reporting: Ethos helps you see the impact of a portfolio, fund, SMA (separately managed account) or set of assets with personalized reports.
• ESG data access: Ethos lets you access its over 2 million points of impact data across 45 causes, more than 260 metrics and 13,000+ securities.
• Modeling: Ethos helps you design portfolios, SMAs, indices and models to fit your desired impact with its modeling tools.
• Client engagement: If you’re a business, Ethos can also help with lead generation by sharing contact information from prospective investors.

Ethos only publishes prices for financial advisors or financial firms. These customers receive a free weeklong trial of Ethos’ platform when they sign up, but after that time is up, they must choose one of its subscription tiers:

• The Lite tier is free to use. This option allows for one user and up to three clients or leads.
• The Advisor tier costs $1,995 per year with annual billing or $229 per month with monthly billing. This option allows for two users and up to 50 clients or leads.
• The Firm tier costs $3,495 per year or $349 per month. This option allows for four users and up to 200 clients or leads.

The Advisor tier unlocks extra features, like personalized portfolio access and client-friendly impact reports, and the Firm tier expands on some of these features by incorporating more of the company’s branding.

Ethos is a legitimate, helpful resource for individuals, financial advisors and corporations who want to learn more about the impact of their business or their investments. It’s not an investment firm, so you can’t use its platform to actually invest your money, but it does provide a streamlined way for you to find information on how investments impact 45 different causes. Depending on your needs, you can use this information to choose more responsible investments, make a difference as a company or educate customers as an advisor.