The 12th annual Ethical Investment Week focuses on the strong connection between Ethical Investing and Growing Generational Wealth.
Why This Matters for You
“Younger investors plan to increase sustainable allocations at higher rates — they are the future of wealth stewardship.”
– Morgan Stanley Sustainable Signals
Australia is about to experience the largest transfer of wealth in its history. Over the next 20 years, between $3.5-$5.4 trillion will move from one generation to the next. Most of it will be in property and superannuation, assets many Australians hold today. At the same time, 88% of Australians now expect their investments to be managed responsibly and ethically.
People over 55 hold 60% of New Zealand’s $2.29 trillion wealth. $1.11 trillion will be transferred in the next 20 years. 75% of New Zealanders expect their investments to be managed ethically and responsibly.
Globally, around USD 83 trillion will be transferred over the next 25 years.
The US alone accounts for USD 29 trillion.
Women and younger investors (Gen Z and Millennials) are increasingly directing these funds and they overwhelmingly prefer ethical, sustainable investment strategies.
Experience the Next Generation’s Voice: The Future Council
As part of Ethical Investment Week 2025, some members of the Ethical Advisers Co-op hosted screenings of ‘Future Council’, the new film by award-winning director Damon Gameau (2040, ‘That Sugar Film’).
The film follows eight children, aged 11–14, on an extraordinary journey across Europe in a bus powered by biofuel. Their mission: to confront global challenges, explore solutions, and speak directly with leaders of some of the world’s most powerful companies.
An extract from a ‘Reality Roundtable’ titled: ‘Future Council: How Children are Responding to our Planetary Crises’ hosted by Nate Hagens, the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF), an organisation focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition.
Q: I’ve increasingly been thinking about these CEOs and anyone, we all wear three hats. The one hat is we’re part of the economic system. We have to make wages or profits, or we have a boss. And the second is, we want to live a good life and enjoy ourselves. And the third is we want to be good ancestors and do what’s right for other species in the planet. The problem is, and this is the character Groth in your movie, is there’s this emergent organism, and the incentives and the prices and the structures don’t allow an individual human to wear all those three hats at the same time. And it’s starting to be really be fractured, like these CEOs and these high level people, they feel the heart, but the structure they’re embedded in is constraining them.
A: Yes. One of the children said that on the trip that we’re all trapped in the system, and that even the people that we met have children and deeply care about the future, but they are deeply intertwined in something they can’t unravel from, and I think that’s a major reason why we haven’t taken the action that we have. So I think that’s the power of the children in this moment, is that they are a little bit separate and free from that. They look at it from a different perspective, and they bring a freshness that we need right now.
