The market changes skin frequently and consequently also investment habits. The pandemic, the climate crisis and above all the digital revolution have favored the emergence of new "financial webs", introducing investment world opportunities for active participation in the generation of value by all savers, who have begun to savor a new way of playing their role: more active and less like a spectator. This is where the figure ofconscious investor, which decides to combine the objective of maximizing the return on its capital with a greater awareness of the effects that this produces on the real economy and on the planet. Is an investor willing to devote time and attention to his illiquid or unlisted investments, because he realizes that there is a strong interactivity between his financial actions and the social, economic and environmental effects that derive from them, an awareness that is often the result of own entrepreneurial experiences.
The concept of conscious investor is a reflection that arises from the collaboration between Paolo Bosani, managing partner of Expand Capital Partners, e Rinaldo Sassi, CEO of Scouting Tra Partners Group spa, published in the book “The conscious investor. Between profitability, responsibility and active commitment”, published by Il Sole 24 Ore.
The conscious investor, an actor of change
Bosani and Sassi tried to sort out all the pieces of the puzzle. They provide a complete picture of the situation but also give hope. “We have continued to act since Investors unaware believing in the balance of an asset allocation (60 shares and 40 bonds or something similar) … accepting that the decisions were mainly regulated expert managers who operate solutions based on standard profiles of financial risk…But something, perhaps, is changing”. What? According to the two authors, the desire to take a more "aware" position of how the financial behavior can affect the planet and our way of life, ensuring a more conscious allocation of assets and continuously generating "financial webs", i.e. investment opportunity in which the actors not only actively participate in the value they create but merge with the project they have decided to finance. And it's thanks to tech if we are also witnessing a "mass" change in our financial habits.
The tools that activate awareness
While blockchain, through crowdfunding, club deals and other forms of collective investment will increasingly take on the field, regulatory changes will become necessary capable of incorporating the new forms of collective participation in investment management, which will tend to no longer coincide with the system of financial intermediaries known up to now. However, their diffusion shows that the market feels the need for tools for active participation in investment projects, not completely resolved through traditional financial structures. It is certain that it is a monetary architecture that needs attention as it lends itself - in the absence of controls - to manipulation, but we are still facing a new frontier accessible to all. For aware investors, the authors explain, it will become inevitable to face the management of their own saving through much more diversification, reachable thanks to the inclusion of new asset classes and new equity instruments, in a long-term vision of one's investments strongly connected to one's work and one's individual interests.
About people and careers
Not just the markets, the entire economic context is the epicenter of a strong social transformation. The work has completely changed its face and is projecting itself towards a much more fluid concept of interaction between people. The “Big Quit” phenomenon demonstrates how much our working culture has changed and that we are looking for another one that is more suitable for us also through the more active role we can play in the allocation of our capital. And the only way to do this, Bosani and Sassi highlight, “is to return to the center of our decisions. There awareness on what we want to be in work as in personal investments it can give us back that sense of belonging to this very complex world which for a long time made us feel somewhat exploited spectators in exchange for ease and ease”.
