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 talking to people face to face in communities across Devon. Her work starts from a simple but powerful belief: there is more that unites us than divides us.

Anthea shares how Common Ground uses a straightforward sticker-board format to invite non-confrontational conversations about democracy, misinformation, political identity and the rise of the far right. She reflects on why so many people are still hungry for healthier democratic engagement, even when they feel disappointed by mainstream politics, and why gentle correction can be more powerful than point-scoring.

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 simple but important question: can investing become a more practical tool for community renewal?

Joining the conversation are Alain Demontoux, Operations and FCA Compliance Manager at Co-operative and Community Finance / ICOF Community Capital, and Jeroen Huysinga, a senior investment leader at Ethex working in positive and impact-led investment. Together, they unpack the thinking behind the ICC Share Offer 2026 and what it tells us about the future of ethical investing, financial planning and purpose-driven capital. At the centre of the discussion is a model of finance that feels refreshingly tangible. Rather than treating impact as a marketing layer, ICC has spent decades providing loan finance to co-operatives and community businesses across the UK. The organisation says it has invested more than £4.4 million through 100 loans to 85 organisations, supporting community assets, social enterprise and neighbourhood regeneration. Its current raise aims to expand that revolving pool of capital and widen access through the Ethex platform. If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow The GoodStock Tapes, leave a review, and share the episode with someone who believes finance can be a force for good. The more people we bring into these conversations, the more likely it is that capital will be used with greater imagination, responsibility and purpose.

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 time, money and teams to spare. But what if the real starting point is much simpler than that?

In this episode of The GoodStock Tapes, we speak with Pamela Moore, founder of Plant Protect, about what it means to begin, not perfectly, but practically. Motivated by a desire to do something meaningful for her granddaughter's generation, Pam stepped into the sustainability space with a simple conviction: businesses do not need to have all the answers before they take action.

That belief now sits at the heart of Plant Protect, which helps small and medium-sized businesses take manageable, credible first steps towards sustainability. The company describes its role as a starting point for responsible growth, combining environmental participation with practical structure so that firms can move from good intentions to documented action.

This conversation explores what happens when ordinary people decide that waiting is no longer enough. Pam reflects on why sustainability should feel achievable rather than overwhelming, why steady progress matters more than perfection, and why businesses of every size have a role to play in shaping the future.

We also explore a deeper question running through the episode: what changes when people stop assuming that sustainability belongs to someone else? For financial planners, advisers and business leaders alike, this is a conversation about responsibility, agency and the power of taking the first meaningful step.

If you have ever thought, "I care about this, but I'm not sure where to begin," this episode is for you.

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 consequences that reach far beyond the kitchen: rising household costs, indoor air pollution, pressure on forests, and a disproportionate burden on women and children. So what happens when a cleaner alternative is not only lower-emission, but also more affordable and more practical for the people using it?

Jordyan Woodley, CEO and co-founder of EcoSafi, a clean cooking company operating in East Africa. EcoSafi's model combines biomass gasification cookstoves with fuel pellets made from agricultural waste, creating an alternative to charcoal that aims to reduce smoke exposure, cut costs for households, and avoid further deforestation. The company has also attracted attention for issuing Africa's first Gold Standard metered clean-cooking carbon credits, offering a more data-led approach to measuring real-world impact.

Jordyan explains why clean cooking should not be treated as a niche development issue, but as a serious conversation about health, dignity, affordability and how capital can solve practical problems in people's daily lives. We explore the human reality behind fuel poverty, the systems thinking required to replace entrenched cooking habits, and why climate finance only matters if it produces tangible improvements for families on the ground.

The conversation also examines one of the most contested areas in sustainable finance: carbon credits. At a time when parts of the market are facing scrutiny, EcoSafi is making the case that transparent, metered, high-integrity carbon finance can help subsidise access to cleaner cooking for lower-income households while creating measurable environmental benefit. That question feels especially timely in the wake of wider disruption in Kenya's clean cooking market.

If you care about ethical investing, impact projects, or the future of finance as a tool for real-world change, this episode is a reminder that some of the most important capital allocation decisions in the world do not happen on trading floors. They happen in homes, communities and everyday systems that shape how people live. Follow The GoodStock Tapes and share this episode with someone who believes finance should be judged by the lives it improves. For more details on how you can support Ecosafi, head to EnergiseAfrica.com

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.