The GoodStock Tapes Podcast

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 years, cash has been the awkward sidebar in many financial plans: easy to overlook, assumed to be "safe", and rarely managed with the same care as investments. But in a world shaped by Consumer Duty, shifting interest rates and heightened expectations around fair value, ignoring cash is becoming harder — and riskier — to justify. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, the host is joined by Dr Emma Black, CEO and co-founder of Cascade Cash Management, and Louis Gleeson, Savings Executive at Cascade. Together, they make the case for turning cash from an afterthought into a deliberate, optimised part of the plan, designed around liquidity needs, return targets and FSCS protection. You'll hear why "do-it-yourself" cash management can quickly become unsustainable for advisers (and operationally risky), how rate structures can be opaque if you're not monitoring them continuously, and why evidence of ongoing monitoring matters just as much for cash as it does for investments. Emma and Louis also explore how clients' real lives shape cash decisions — from property plans and tax liabilities to bereavement, divorce, business sales and trust administration, and why different client segments demand different cash solutions. The conversation also touches on a growing theme for values-led planners: the rising number of providers and products that aim to align savings with ethical preferences, helping clients bring their values into every part of their financial plan, not just the investment portfolio. If you advise clients who hold meaningful cash balances (and most do), this episode will sharpen how you think about client outcomes, planning value, and the future of cash as a strategic asset. If you found the discussion useful, follow the show and share it with a planner who still treats cash as "just the bank account".

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 quietly in the background of financial planning, until it doesn't. When premiums spike, exclusions appear, or capacity dries up, it becomes more than an admin headache: it becomes an existential threat to firms, client service, and the profession's ability to invest in better outcomes. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, Adam is joined by John and Jonathan from BearRock to explore what's gone wrong with the traditional PI model and what a more sustainable, fairer approach could look like. They start with a frustration many advisers recognise: great firms being priced and treated like average firms, and the uncomfortable reality of cross-subsidisation, where well-run businesses end up carrying the cost of "bad actors" who repeatedly run roughshod through rules and risk controls. John makes a key distinction: insurance exists to cover genuine mistakes, but it becomes destabilising when systemic poor practice is allowed to contaminate the entire risk pool. From there, the conversation gets practical. BearRock's approach is built around a digital-first underwriting process designed to collect clearer, more consistent data, moving beyond the industry's "fillable PDF" status quo. Crucially, their model also introduces tiered "club membership" discounts, rewarding firms that embrace robust governance, risk mitigation, and a culture of doing the right thing. The early signs are encouraging: in BearRock's first renewal cycle, half of firms took up a consultation, and 78% of those firms moved up a tier and unlocked a premium discount — a rare example of an insurance model actively incentivising improvement rather than simply penalising risk after the fact. Finally, they discuss why the sustainability of PI is intertwined with the sustainability of financial planning itself — and tease forthcoming work with Goodstock and eSales to explore how sustainability practices might be recognised within underwriting. If you're an adviser, compliance lead, or firm owner who wants PI to be more than a grudge purchase — this one's worth your time. Follow the show and share it with a colleague who believes finance can be a force for good. About Jonathan and John Johnathan Newell and John Netting are the team behind BearRock, a professional indemnity insurance proposition designed specifically for financial advisers and planners with a focus on fairness, sustainability, and better risk outcomes. John previously led a network as Founder, Director and Head of Compliance, giving him first-hand experience of the pain points advisers face at renewal, and the deeper structural problems created when strong firms are forced to subsidise systemic poor practice elsewhere in the market. Jonathan has worked closely with advice firms and strategic partners across the PI landscape, advocating for a more modern approach to underwriting that recognises the difference between genuinely well-run firms and industry averages. Together, they've built a digital-first PI application process and a "club membership" model that rewards firms for robust governance, strong controls, and a culture of risk mitigation, including consultations designed to help firms reduce risk and, in many cases, unlock meaningful premium discounts at renewal. 

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 had a turbulent few years. ESG went from buzzword to backlash—yet the underlying client need hasn't disappeared: people still want their money to reflect what they value. The problem is practical. The language can feel loaded, the process can feel compliance-led, and many "one-size-fits-all" sustainable portfolios don't match the messy reality of human priorities. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we're joined by Charlie French and Liall Medina, childhood friends, brothers-in-law, and co-founders of Etcho, a UK platform built to help advisers make values-led investing usable in real advice conversations. Their core argument is quietly provocative: suitability shouldn't stop at attitude to risk and capacity for loss. If a client cares deeply about certain issues, ignoring values alignment may be a blind spot in the advice process. We unpack Etcho's human-first approach to profiling—designed to feel more like a conversation than a questionnaire and how it can sit alongside existing risk profiling and centralised investment propositions. We also explore the importance of portfolio transparency: looking through funds to underlying holdings, showing clients what "closer to my values" could have meant historically, and explaining any trade-offs with clarity rather than defensiveness. A recurring theme is storytelling, not as marketing, but as client understanding. Metrics matter, but most clients engage through tangible narratives: what they own, what it supports, and why it fits their priorities. Finally, Charlie and Lyle share Etcho's direction of travel: scalable personalised portfolios, and a longer-term ambition to broaden access to more tangible impact opportunities, without creating more platforms, more complexity, or more paperwork for advisers. If you want sustainable finance to feel less like jargon and more like good advice, this conversation will give you fresh language, sharper questions, and practical ideas. If you found it useful, follow the show and share the episode with someone who believes finance can be a force for good. About Charlie and Liall Charlie French and Liall Medina are the co-founders of Etcho, a UK platform helping financial advisers bring values-led investing into everyday financial planning, without drowning clients in acronyms or turning sustainability into a compliance-only exercise. Childhood friends and now brothers-in-law, they built Etcho to solve a persistent gap: most people care about issues they see in the news and in their communities, yet investment conversations often fail to capture those priorities in a usable, auditable way. Etcho combines a short, client-friendly values profiling experience with portfolio look-through analysis helping firms understand how well model portfolios and propositions align with what clients actually care about. With backgrounds spanning sustainability (including experience at a UN agency) and ESG data, Charlie and Lyle are focused on making "values suitability" practical: clearer conversations, better evidence, and reporting that prioritises client understanding through transparency and storytelling.

"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 reality that many "ethical" portfolios still hold companies linked to serious harm. At the heart of the conversation is a deceptively simple idea: the power of the question. Chris explains why the biggest gap in sustainable and ethical investing is often not a lack of policies, but a lack of meaningful accountability. When clients "take the lid off the fund" and find companies that don't align with their values, fund managers should be able to explain the trade-offs, yet too often, the response is a vague shrug about "balance" and "averages". Chris also makes the case that impact is being mis-measured. Environmental progress matters, but he argues we routinely underweight human rights and labour rights, even though climate change is already amplifying exploitation, through heat stress, migration pressures, and supply chains operating in increasingly unliveable conditions. The discussion goes further, questioning whether we've asked fund management to solve problems that should be solved through regulation and whether "ESG" has become so diluted that the line between sustainable and conventional investing is starting to blur. For financial planners, the takeaway is practical and provocative: stop outsourcing the thinking. Ask what's happening inside the portfolio, talk to clients honestly about complexity and complicity, and resist glib assurances that "there's nothing you can do". If you care about sustainable finance that stands up to scrutiny, this episode is an invitation to get more curious — and more courageous with your questions. About Chris Chris Welsford is an independent financial adviser and the founder of Antithesis Research, a worker-owned co-operative focused on scrutinising what sits inside "sustainable" investment portfolios. He has worked in financial advice for around three decades, building his advisory firm, Ayers & Punchard, with a strong emphasis on transparent, fee-based advice and a long-standing interest in socially responsible investing. Chris is known for challenging the gap between the promises made by sustainable funds and the reality of their underlying holdings, particularly where companies may be linked to human rights, labour rights, or environmental harm. Through Antithesis Research, he works to bring deeper accountability to the fund management industry, encouraging advisers and investors to ask tougher questions, demand clearer evidence, and take a more honest view of what impact can (and can't) be achieved through listed markets.  

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 resilience, and a more democratic model of capitalism. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we explore how communities are financing solar and wind projects that generate clean electricity, while keeping the benefits rooted where the power is produced. Our guest, Tim Stumpff, has a career spanning corporate law and institutional asset management, and now focuses on community energy financing. He shares what drew him from traditional markets towards more directly measurable impact, and why he believes community energy is one of the clearest examples of purpose-driven capital at work: projects that can reduce emissions, lower bills for schools and public buildings, and recycle profits into community benefit funds. We unpack what community energy actually is (and what it isn't): not a "maximise shareholder value" play, but a model where returns are shared across stakeholders—end users, investors, and the wider community. Tim also brings a practical lens to the investing conversation, including how community energy offerings often function more like yield products than capital growth plays, what historical default experience looks like in the sector, and why diversification matters when building exposure. The conversation goes further into the policy changes that could unlock a step-change in scale, particularly local electricity access (selling surplus power locally) and the role of tax incentives like EIS/SEIS in channelling more capital into community-owned generation. If you're a financial planner, adviser, or values-led investor looking for real-world impact you can actually point to on a map, this episode is an invitation to rethink what "responsible use of capital" can look like in practice. Listen in—and consider what role your money, or your advice, could play in powering the transition. About Tim Tim Stumpff is a community energy finance specialist with a background spanning corporate law and institutional asset management. After years working in traditional capital markets, Tim shifted his focus towards opportunities where capital can create direct, measurable environmental and social outcomes, particularly through locally owned clean power. Tim has been investing in community energy for several years and has supported dozens of community share and bond offerings across the UK. More recently, he has helped provide bridge financing that enables community energy groups to install projects sooner and build stronger pipelines, bringing practical capital markets tools into a sector that often struggles with upfront funding.

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 dismissed as "woke", idealistic, or optional, something to prioritise when markets are calm and abandon when things get tough. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we challenge that framing head-on. Host Clemence sits down with Nicola Day, Deputy Head of Greenbank Investments and Investment Director, whose career spans more than 30 years in ethical and sustainable investing, from the early days when it was seen as niche, to today's more sophisticated (and contested) landscape. Nicola argues that sustainability isn't a distraction from performance. It's the foundation of long-term commercial success, because it forces decision-makers to confront the full risk picture: climate, nature loss, supply chains, governance, and social outcomes. This conversation digs into why so many businesses still cling to linear "take-make-dispose" models, and why that mindset is increasingly incompatible with a world of tightening regulation, physical climate impacts, and fragile global systems. Nicola shares how Greenbank approaches sustainability as evidence-based investment research, translating environmental and social realities into financial risks and opportunities. Crucially, she explains what stewardship looks like when it has real integrity: engagement that leads somewhere, escalation when it doesn't, and voting that sends a clear signal. We hear examples ranging from voting against Shell's 2024 AGM energy transition update to policy influence through the Investor Coalition on Food Policy, founded in 2021, which helped push for stronger reporting expectations from large companies. You'll also hear a practical, hopeful theme running throughout: none of this happens in isolation. Change requires collective movement, investors, advisers, policymakers, businesses, and communities pulling in the same direction. If you're a financial planner, investor, or simply someone who wants their money to reflect the world they want to live in, this episode will leave you with both sharper questions, and more confidence that finance can be a force for good. About Nicola Nicola Day is Deputy Head of Greenbank Investments and an Investment Director, working across portfolios for private clients, charities and pension funds. With more than 30 years' experience in ethical, sustainable and responsible investing, Nicola has seen the field evolve from a niche approach into a sophisticated area of the investment market and remains a leading voice on what sustainability should mean in practice.

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 planners still hesitate, often with the familiar refrain: "My clients aren't interested." In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we're joined by Max Tennant, Partner of Advisory Services at GSI and Chairman of IFA Max, to unpack what's really going on beneath that statement and what the profession can do about it. With more than 30 years in advice, Max has watched the industry adopt new ideas in waves: from passive investing, to factor investing, to what he sees as the next obvious step, an ESG overlay as a baseline part of modern portfolio construction. The provocative point he returns to again and again is simple: if the evidence doesn't show a meaningful performance penalty, why wouldn't you do it? Max shares how a single open question, "What do you want for society and the world at large?", reshaped his client process from 2005 onwards. He's candid about early mistakes (including asking clients whether they wanted their investments to change, and getting predictable "no" responses), and explains the turning point: making sustainable risk integration the default, not the optional extra. The conversation also tackles a persistent confusion in the market: ESG integration vs impact investing. When these get bundled together, expectations become distorted and advisers become more hesitant than they need to be. If you're an adviser who wants to serve clients more fully, build trust faster, and bring responsible use of capital into everyday planning this episode will give you a practical, optimistic route in. If this conversation resonates, follow the show and share it with one adviser who still thinks ESG has to be complicated. About Max Max Tennant is Partner of Advisory Services at GSI and Chairman of IFA Max, with over 30 years' experience in financial advice. A regular conference speaker across the UK, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Max is known for making complex ideas practical — from practice management and delegation, to responsible investing and systemic portfolio design. Max began integrating sustainability into client conversations in 2005 after reshaping his consultative process around deeper, values-led questions, including the deceptively simple: "What do you want for society and the world at large?" Since then, he has applied passive and factor-based investment approaches alongside an ESG risk overlay, focusing on the idea that better-managed companies can lead to better long-term outcomes. His perspective is grounded in evidence, client experience, and a belief that financial planning can be both technically robust and socially constructive, without compromising on investment discipline.  

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 easier. More products, more data, more regulation, surely that means more clarity for clients and advisers alike. And yet, in this conversation with Cleona Lira (Conscious Money), we explore why ethical investing can feel harder than ever: politically charged headlines, corporate backtracking, regulatory delays, and a general sense that people are simply too stretched to care. Cleona shares her biggest frustrations from the past year in sustainable finance, particularly the growing gap in "shared reality" about the harm corporations can cause, and the slow progress of clearer labelling through the FCA's Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR). She also unpacks a tension many advisers recognise: evidence-based, low-cost passive investing can be a brilliant default, but it may also lock clients into exposures they'd never knowingly choose, especially if they haven't been shown what sits inside major indices. But the heart of this episode goes beyond fund selection. Cleona brings an unusually human perspective to financial planning, describing how fear, procrastination and money anxiety can derail even high-net-worth clients—sometimes leaving life-changing sums sitting in cash. Her approach draws on practices more commonly found in therapy rooms than investment committees: values-led conversations, "shadow work", somatic awareness, and tools like Internal Family Systems to navigate internal conflict. You'll also hear why Cleona has practised 10-day silent meditation retreats, and how calm nervous system regulation can become a professional advantage, especially when markets fall and clients need steadiness more than spreadsheets. If you're a financial planner, paraplanner, or ethically-minded investor trying to make sense of sustainable finance in a messy world, this episode offers both challenge and reassurance: you don't have to "force" change but you can design conditions where better choices become easier. Listen in and consider sharing this episode with someone who believes finance can be a force for good, but isn't sure where to start. About Cleona Cleona Lira is a UK financial planner and the founder of Conscious Money, where she helps clients align their financial decisions with their values without losing sight of good planning fundamentals. Known for championing ethical and sustainable investing, Cleona brings a candid perspective on the realities of ESG, regulatory change, and the practical trade-offs hidden inside "mainstream" investing approaches. What sets Cleona apart is her focus on the human side of money. Alongside portfolios and tax planning, she explores how fear, procrastination and long-held beliefs can shape financial behaviour, sometimes keeping clients stuck for years. Her work draws on approaches such as values-based planning, somatic awareness, and psychological tools designed to help people make clearer, calmer decisions.  

600 million people in Africa still live without electricity and the bottleneck isn't technology, it's finance. Ray Coyle, CEO of Energize 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 underestimated constraints on human and economic development and one of the clearest tests of whether sustainable finance is serious about outcomes. In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we're joined by Ray Coyle, CEO of Energize Africa, to explore what impact investing looks like when it moves beyond ESG labels and into real-world infrastructure. Ray shares the origin story of Energize Africa: a UK government-backed idea (now under the FCDO umbrella) designed to give ordinary people in the UK a way to help fund energy access in sub-Saharan Africa.  We also go on the ground. What does "no electricity" actually mean for education after dark, safer streets, business productivity, health, and dignity? And what does a credible solution set look like, solar home systems, green mini-grids, battery storage, and electric mobility (including the economics of electric motorbikes for boda boda riders)? Crucially, this conversation doesn't pretend impact is risk-free. Ray talks candidly about where risk sits (issuer risk), the reality of operating shocks, climate disruption, and currency devaluation and why transparency matters when advisers discuss suitability. We also cover how these investments are typically structured, including targeted returns (often 6–8%) and common terms (from six months to three years), and where wrappers like an Innovative Finance ISA may apply. If you're an adviser, investor, or anyone curious about purpose-driven capital that actually builds things, this episode offers a grounded lens on how capital allocation can widen access to the basics, without hiding the trade-offs. Listen now and if it sparks a new question about what "ethical investing" should prioritise, share it with someone who cares about finance as a force for good. About Ray Ray Coyle is the CEO of Energize Africa, a crowdfunding direct investment platform focused on expanding clean energy access across sub-Saharan Africa. Ray's work sits at the intersection of sustainable finance, impact investing and real-economy infrastructure—connecting retail investors to businesses and projects delivering practical solutions such as solar home systems, decentralised mini-grids and clean transport.  

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, Clémence Chatelin is joined by Julia Davies, a former commercial lawyer and entrepreneur who became an environmental investor after selling Osprey Europe. Julia describes the disorienting "lottery win" feeling of a liquidity event and the surprising discovery that more spending doesn't necessarily mean a better life. Instead, she began asking a sharper question: what is money actually for, and what is it trying to protect? This conversation goes beyond the usual ESG talking points. Julia shares why she found much of mainstream "impact" investing too focused on avoiding harm (exclusions and labels) rather than increasing the likelihood of real-world outcomes. We explore her practical approach to deploying capital across different "pots" of money, each with its own purpose, timeframe, risk tolerance and expectation of return. A key tension is the traditional endowment mindset: invest the capital, protect it forever, and donate slowly from the income. Julia makes a provocative case for urgency. With climate, biodiversity loss, pollution and resource extraction compounding, she argues that slow giving can become a comforting default rather than an honest response to the timescale we're in. About Julia Julia Davies is an entrepreneur-turned-impact investor and advocate for using capital in service of tangible social and ecological outcomes. Originally trained as a commercial lawyer, she spent years supporting charities—first in-house at the RSPCA and later through her own legal practice advising charitable organisations. Julia also co-founded Osprey Europe, the European distributor of Osprey backpacks and travel bags, helping grow the business from an early-stage venture into a successful operation. After the company was sold, she began a focused learning journey into ethical and impact investing, starting with limited formal investment experience, but a clear ethical compass and a strong sense of urgency about climate and biodiversity. Today, Julia deploys capital across charitable giving, impact investing and philanthropic loans designed to help wildlife trusts and community organisations purchase land and restore nature. She is also a member of Patriotic Millionaires, highlighting how extreme inequality undermines social stability and why building a safer future involves both private action and properly funded public systems.