The GoodStock Tapes Podcast
GoodStock 22 episodes Nov 9, 2026
The GoodStock Tapes Podcast explores how financial advice and investing can better align with purpose, ethics, and real-world impact. Hosted by voices from the GoodStock community, it features candid conversations with financial planners, fund managers, entrepreneurs, academics, and change-makers. Episodes examine practical questions around ethical investing, ESG, sustainability, and how advisers can build businesses that connect profit with purpose.
Episodes
AI, Sustainable Finance and the Future of Financial Planning
Artificial intelligence promises to transform financial planning. Meeting notes, suitability reports and administrative processes that once consumed hours can increasingly be completed in minutes but is making financial advice faster the same as making it better? Could AI actually help create a more sustainable, accessible and human-centred profession? In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we we
Are Financial Planners Ignoring the Biggest Risk of All?
Simon is a former accountant and business leader who, alongside his brother Nick, established and funded an ambitious initiative to bring leading scientific and policy experts together to explain the growing risks posed by climate and nature breakdown. Their message is that this is no longer simply an environmental issue. It is a question of economic stability, food security, national resilience a
Is Your Client's Cash Really Neutral? Ed Siegel on Ethical Banking
Is cash really a neutral part of a client's financial plan or have we become so focused on investment portfolios that we've overlooked the impact of the money sitting in bank accounts? In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we are joined by Ed Siegel, Chief Executive of Charity Bank, for a thought-provoking conversation about ethical banking, social investment and the responsibility that comes wi
Sustainable Investing, the Great Wealth Transfer and the Future of Advice
Sustainable investing has been on quite a journey. From a relatively niche investment approach to enormous inflows, followed by performance challenges, accusations of greenwashing and an increasingly vocal backlash. Perhaps the real obstacle to sustainable investing becoming mainstream isn't whether clients care about it. Perhaps it's whether financial advisers have the confidence, tools and inves
Can Personalised Investing Replace the Model Portfolio?
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. Etch
The Future of Paraplanning, AI and Sustainable Finance
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
Can communities own the energy transition?
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 inve
Does Impact Investing Actually Create Impact?
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
Is Affordable Lending the Impact Investment We're Overlooking?
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 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
Finding Common Ground in Divided Times
Politics can often feel tribal, exhausting and designed to keep people at a distance. But what if the answer is not to shout louder, but to listen better? In this episode of The Good Stock Tapes, we speak with Anthea Simmons — campaigner, citizen journalist, co-founder of the South Devon Primary, founder of Common Ground, and editor-in-chief of West Country Voices — about what she has learned from
Can Community Investment Really Rebuild Local Britain?
What does it look like when investment stops chasing abstraction and starts saving pubs, shops, football clubs and community spaces? In this conversation, Alain Demontoux and Jeroen Huysinga explore how capital can be used more deliberately, not just to generate returns, but to strengthen local economies and keep vital assets in community hands. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we explore a
How One Grandmother is Helping Firms Work More Sustainably, One Step at a Time
What if making a difference didn't begin with a grand strategy, but with one simple decision to act? In this episode, Pam Moore shares how concern for her granddaughter's generation led her to launch Plant Protect and help businesses take practical first steps into sustainability. Sustainability can often feel like something reserved for large corporates, specialist consultants or businesses with
Can Clean Cooking Change Lives at Scale? Inside EcoSafi's Impact Model
What does impact investing look like when it shows up in an ordinary kitchen? In this episode, Jordyan Woodley explains how EcoSafi is helping families in Kenya move away from charcoal towards cleaner, cheaper cooking, while also opening up a more tangible and accountable model of climate finance. Millions of households across Kenya still rely on charcoal and wood for everyday cooking, with conseq
FSCS Protection as a Planning Tool: Rethinking Cash in Ethical Financial Planning
Cash is often the largest "unmanaged" part of a client's balance sheet and that quiet neglect can create real risk, missed returns and poor outcomes. In this conversation, Dr Emma Black and Louis Gleeson explain why cash should be treated as a strategic pillar of financial planning, not a parking space. What would change in your practice if cash reviews became as routine as investment reviews? For
A Smarter PI Market: How Data and Culture WIll Stabilise Adviser Insurance
Professional indemnity insurance is meant to protect good firms so why does it often feel like the best advisers are paying for the worst behaviour? In this episode, BearRock's John Netting and Jonathan Newell argue that PI can be redesigned to reward strong governance, reduce volatility, and strengthen the long-term sustainability of financial planning. Professional indemnity (PI) insurance sits
Suitability Beyond Risk: Should Portfolios Reflect Client Values Too?
Most "ESG" conversations fail because they begin with labels, not lives. Etcho co-founders Charlie French and Liall Medina explain how advisers can uncover what clients genuinely care about and then evidence, implement, and report on values alignment without turning advice into a tick-box exercise. Should "suitability" explicitly include values, not just risk and return? Sustainable investing has
Stop Lying to Us: Human Rights, ESG and the Future of Sustainable Finance
"Sustainable" is one of the most overused words in modern finance and, at times, one of the least interrogated. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, Clemence is joined by Chris Welsford, founder of Antithesis Research and a long-standing independent financial adviser. Chris has spent decades challenging the industry's blind spots from the mis-selling culture of commission to the uncomfortable r
Purpose-Driven Capital in Action: Community Energy and Fairer Bills
What if the clean energy transition didn't just cut carbon but also cut bills, tackle fuel poverty and put decision-making power in local hands? Tim Stumpff explains why community energy might be one of the most tangible forms of impact investing in the UK and why the risk/return story is stronger than many assume. Community energy sits at a fascinating intersection: sustainable finance, local res
Sustainable Finance Isn't "Woke", It's Risk Management
What if sustainable investing isn't a values add-on but the most commercially sensible way to run a business and build resilient portfolios? Nicola Day of Greenbank explains why the real problem isn't sustainability… it's the persistent misunderstanding of what it actually means, and how investors can push for change with evidence, engagement and voting power. Sustainable finance is often dismisse
Why "Clients Aren't Interested" Is Holding Ethical Investing Back
Advisers often say clients "aren't interested" in sustainable investing but what if that's really a confidence gap ? Max Tennant argues that adding an ESG overlay can be simpler than you think, and that the biggest shift isn't performance… it's the quality of the client conversation. Sustainable investing has been around long enough that it shouldn't still feel controversial yet many financial pla
Ethical Investing Without the Echo Chamber: Meeting Clients Where They Are
Sustainable finance is getting louder, more political, and at times more confusing. Financial planner Cleona Lira argues the missing piece isn't a new fund label, but a healthier relationship with money: one that includes values, emotions, and even silence. If clients are overwhelmed and disengaged, what would it take for advice to feel empowering again? Sustainable investing should be getting eas
Crowdfunding Clean Energy Access: How Everyday Investors Can Back Africa's Future
600 million people in Africa still live without electricity and the bottleneck isn't technology, it's finance. Ray Coyle, CEO of Energise Africa, explains how UK retail capital is being connected to solar, mini-grids and clean transport and why honest impact investing must talk about currency shocks, climate disruption, and what "appropriate risk" really means. Energy poverty is one of the most un
Financial Planning After "Enough": Philanthropic Loans and Real-World Impact
What if the most responsible use of wealth isn't to preserve it indefinitely, but to deploy it, urgently, while it can still change outcomes? Julia Davies unpacks the "power of enough", why she rejected slow endowment-style giving, and how impact investing (from community energy to philanthropic loans for land restoration) can be practical, not performative. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes
