The GoodStock Tapes Podcast

The financial advice profession is changing. Clients are asking deeper questions about purpose, impact and the role money plays in building a better world. Yet many advisers still feel caught between traditional investment thinking and the growing demand for something more meaningful.The GoodStock Tapes is where those conversations happen.Hosted by leading voices from the GoodStock community, this podcast explores the intersection of financial planning, investing, ethics and real-world impact. Through candid interviews and thought-provoking discussions, we speak with financial planners, fund managers, entrepreneurs, academics and change-makers who are reshaping how capital can be used for good.Each episode goes beyond the surface to explore questions such as:What does good investing actually look like in practice?Can portfolios deliver strong returns and positive impact?How should financial planners talk to clients about sustainability and ethics?Where is ESG getting it wrong –

The GoodStock Tapes Podcast is a business podcast hosted by GoodStock, with 18 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

GoodStock hosts The GoodStock Tapes Podcast, a business show with 18 episodes published.

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  Episode #19

  Can Personalised Investing Replace the Model Portfolio?

  Sep 29, 202627 minS1

  What happens when a client's values point towards one portfolio, but an adviser's investment judgement points towards another? In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, Adam welcomes back Charlie French, co-founder of Etcho, for a deeper conversation about sustainable investing, values-based financial advice and the emerging possibility of delivering personalised investment portfolios at scale. Etcho was founded to help connect wealth with individual values, working with advisers and wealth managers to understand what matters to clients and translate those preferences into investment decisions. Charlie argues that one of the biggest barriers to sustainable investing isn't necessarily a lack of interest. It's the difficulty of having the conversation in the first place. Asking clients what they care about can open a "can of worms": competing priorities, uncomfortable trade-offs and expectations that an adviser must then find a way to deliver. But that complexity may also be where some of the most valuable financial planning conversations begin. Adam and Charlie explore what happens when funds carrying sustainable labels contain holdings a client doesn't expect, how advisers can help clients understand the consequences of leaning further into their values, and why personalisation shouldn't mean imposing somebody else's definition of sustainability. The conversation then moves to a potentially bigger disruption: personalised portfolios delivered at scale. Etcho says its technology can combine client circumstances, risk, goals, values and sustainability preferences while operating within investment managers' frameworks. If that becomes commonplace, what happens to the traditional centralised investment proposition? And could the adviser of the future spend less time operating technology, and more time being genuinely present with the client? If this conversation made you think differently about what personalised financial advice should really mean, follow The GoodStock Tapes wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review and share it with an adviser, planner or investment professional who believes capital can be used as a force for good. The best conversations about the future of finance shouldn't stop when the podcast ends.

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  Episode #18

  The Future of Paraplanning, AI and Sustainable Finance

  Sep 14, 202635 minS1

  Sustainability is often treated as an additional question at the end of the financial planning process: a box to tick once risk, objectives and performance have already been discussed. But what would change if a client's values were considered from the beginning? In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we are joined by Scott Daniels, co-founder and director of Plus Group, a specialist provider of paraplanning, adviser support and technology-enabled services to UK financial planning businesses. Scott argues that the profession must move beyond jargon-heavy labels and start asking better questions. When a client says they want their money to "do some good", they may be expressing a desire to avoid particular industries, support positive outcomes or simply feel more comfortable with the way their capital is being used. The adviser's task is to understand that meaning, test it against the client's wider objectives and create a clear evidence trail. The conversation examines how specialist paraplanning can help translate values into structured research, suitable recommendations and personalised documentation. Scott explains why good records should show what the client said, how the adviser interpreted it, what research followed and why the eventual recommendation reflected the client's preferences. We also consider whether environmental and climate-related risks should become a more formal part of long-term financial planning. From coastal property and insurance exposure to the idea of a "climate emergency fund", the discussion asks whether traditional approaches to risk remain sufficient for plans spanning several decades. Finally, Scott shares a practical view of artificial intelligence. AI can capture richer meeting information, reduce administrative pressure and surface useful details, but it cannot replace the human ability to interpret nuance, ask follow-up questions and exercise professional judgement. This is a thoughtful conversation about personalisation, Consumer Duty, sustainable investing and the infrastructure advisers need to have more meaningful conversations. Follow The GoodStock Tapes and share this episode with someone who believes finance can be a force for good.

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  Episode #17

  Can communities own the energy transition?

  Sep 3, 202626 minS1

  Who should own the infrastructure powering the transition to net zero, and how early should communities be invited into the conversation? In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we speak with Ciara Shannon, Founding Director of the Green Finance Community Hub and Green Finance Lead at the North West Net Zero Hub. Ciara has spent much of her career at the intersection of sustainability, impact investment and green finance, and is now helping develop Project Collette, an ambitious proposed community-led offshore wind project off the coast of Cumbria. At approximately 1.2GW, Project Collette is conceived on a very different scale from most traditional community energy schemes. But the most interesting part of the proposition is not simply the turbines. It is the financial architecture behind them. Ciara explains the project's Community Integrated Investment Model, designed to give local people meaningful participation from an unusually early stage while still enabling the institutional investment required for infrastructure of this size. We explore community benefit societies, community shares, governance, the idea of a restricted golden share, and how community interests might coexist with conventional project finance. The conversation also moves beyond Project Collette itself. Why are so many sustainability professionals occupied with frameworks and measurement while potentially investable projects struggle to get through early-stage development? Why is feasibility capital so difficult to secure? And has sustainability become too focused on avoiding risk rather than enabling experimentation? Ciara argues that there is plenty of capital looking for credible opportunities. The challenge is creating more projects that are genuinely investment ready. For financial planners, investors and anyone interested in sustainable finance, this is a conversation about more than offshore wind. It asks a bigger question, "How might capital be structured so that the communities affected by investment become participants in it too?" If you believe finance can be a force for good, this episode offers plenty to think about.

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  Episode #16

  Does Impact Investing Actually Create Impact?

  Sep 3, 202653 minS1

  What does it really mean to invest for impact? In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, Dr Alan Whittle joins Clem for a deliberately provocative hot take: much of what is currently described as impact investing for retail clients may not actually be creating meaningful additional impact. Alan is the founder and director of Unburdened Solutions, a Chartered Financial Planner, Fellow of the Personal Finance Society and researcher specialising in sustainable finance, ethics and impact investing. His PhD explored how framing influences decision-making in advised impact investing. Together, Alan and Clem unpack an important distinction between aligning investments with a client's values and actually directing capital towards activity that creates measurable change. They explore the role of listed equities, stewardship and shareholder advocacy; the limitations of investment labels; and why asset managers may need to involve end investors much more seriously in their theories of change. The conversation then moves into the less familiar world of private and community-based impact investment — where capital can potentially finance tangible projects, businesses and social outcomes, but where due diligence, liquidity and investment risk can be considerably more challenging. For financial planners, that creates a dilemma. Clients may have surplus capital they genuinely want to use for good, yet the regulatory and technological infrastructure of mainstream advice often makes these investments difficult to research, recommend or even hold. Alan introduces a useful idea for navigating this tension: a client's "capacity for impact", considering how much capital someone could commit to genuinely transformative investments while remaining financially secure if that capital were lost or became illiquid. This is ultimately a conversation about curiosity, honesty and the responsibility of advisers to understand a rapidly evolving investment landscape. If we want finance to become a more powerful force for good, perhaps we need to start by being clearer about what our money is, and isn't changing.

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  Episode #15

  Is Affordable Lending the Impact Investment We're Overlooking?

  Aug 8, 202633 minS1

  What if millions of people excluded from mainstream credit are not actually "bad borrowers", but people being assessed by the wrong system? In this episode, Salad Money CEO Craig Pennington and Ethex's Jeroen Huysinga explore how Open Banking is changing affordability decisions and ask whether funding fairer credit could represent a genuine social impact investment opportunity. Around 20 million adults in the UK are underserved or excluded by mainstream credit, but does that necessarily mean they cannot afford to borrow, or does it expose a weakness in the way our financial system decides who is creditworthy?` Craig explains why conventional credit scores can provide an incomplete picture of someone's financial circumstances, particularly for renters, people with thin credit histories and those whose financial position has changed. Salad takes a different approach, using permissioned Open Banking information to assess current income, expenditure and affordability rather than relying primarily on a historic credit score. The conversation also explores an important part of responsible lending that is easily overlooked: knowing when not to lend. Craig discusses Salad's approach to identifying financial vulnerability, signposting applicants towards organisations such as StepChange and providing access to other forms of support. Jeroen explains why Ethex sees affordable finance as a form of direct social impact investment, how it assesses potential investees and why relatively small amounts of junior capital can help organisations such as Salad unlock considerably larger pools of lending finance. For financial planners and advisers, however, impact cannot be considered separately from investment risk. The conversation examines illiquidity, the absence of FSCS protection, uncertain returns and the role these investments might, or might not, play within a suitably diversified portfolio. Ultimately, this is a conversation about what responsible capital looks like from both sides of the balance sheet, who gets access to money, who provides it and what happens when we design finance around people rather than scores. If you believe capital can play a constructive role in tackling financial exclusion, this is an episode worth hearing. If you enjoyed this conversation, follow The GoodStock Tapes wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a review. And if this episode made you think differently about credit, financial inclusion or the way capital is allocated, share it with a financial planner, adviser or investor who believes finance can be a force for good.

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