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Spotlight on Investors: Wespath
15-Apr-2019 2:44:55 PM
Founded in 1908, Wespath is a non-profit agency serving the United Methodist Church. It supervises and administers retirement plans, investment funds and health and welfare benefit plans for active and retired clergy and lay employees of the Church. As a faith-based organization, Wespath seeks to promote the values of the United Methodist Church as expressed in the Social Principle by integrating environmental, social and governance factors in the selection of investments across asset classes and into the selection of external managers. The organization had over $ 21.9 billion of assets under management as of December 31st, 2018.
Wespath is actively involved in shareholder and public policy advocacy, proxy voting, portfolio screening and community investing (notably through their Positive Social Purpose Lending Program that has cumulatively invested over $2 billion in affordable housing, and community development in underserved communities of the United States). Wespath's exclusion policy is guided by ethical considerations, as such, the organization avoids investments in companies whose activity involves the production, distribution, and marketing of alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, adult entertainment, weapons, gambling, and privately-operated correctional facilities. Additionally, Wespath has adopted a Human Rights Guideline which excludes the sovereign debt of any country demonstrating prolonged and systematic pattern of human rights abuses according to Freedom House's annual survey: Freedom in the World. Finally, Wespath is a founding signatory to the UN PRI and an active member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.
