Episode 168 - Empty the Storehouses with Eventide's Finny Kuruvilla
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In Matthew 6, Jesus says to store our treasures in heaven, not earth, and in this episode of the Faith Driven Investor Podcast, Finny Kuruvilla joins John and Richard to talk about what that might mean for investors.
They’ll also discuss the importance of investing with a goal and supporting others, investing in the common good, and the role of wealth in the church. They also touch on market trends and Eventide's perspective, as well as healthcare investing and innovations.
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All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Survey Disclaimer:
Based on a survey of 1,479 respondents who self-identified as committed Christians (defined as having a Christian faith that is important in their life), ages 30+, with a minimum $100K investable assets or $75K household income. 54% of respondents indicate they have a financial advisor. 63% of respondents who have a Financial Advisor have not spoken to their advisor about any type of values-based investing (including faith-based investing, impact investing, or ESG). 62% of respondents who have a financial advisor would be willing to change financial advisors in order to get access to investments that align with their values. The survey was conducted by Pinkston, on behalf of Eventide, in October 2023.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Joseph Honescko: In Matthew six, Jesus tells us to lay up our treasures in heaven, not earth. So how is that going to work for investors? In today's episode of Finny Kuruvilla from Eventide joins Richard and John to unpack this teaching from the sermon on the Mount and to give investors some practical ways they can implement this in their own lives. He and John both will also hit on a few market trends that they're seeing, and they'll talk about the ways they are continually evaluating what it means to lead a faith driven culture. All that and more in this episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Let's get into it.
Rusty Rueff: Hey everyone! All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies of securities discussed, and this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization. Thanks for listening.
Richard Cunningham: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Faith Driven Investor podcast. We are grateful to have you tuning in wherever this podcast might find you. My name is Richard Cunningham. I have the joy of serving on staff with faith driven investor. Joined today by one of our amazing mainstays in John Coleman and John Coleman. We are in for a treat today because it is not just you and I in the podcast studio.
John Coleman: Yeah, that's right. We are very fortunate to have one of the brightest minds in the space and someone that I've come to admire a lot. Finny Kuruvilla from Eventide Asset Management, one of the founders, obviously lead portfolio manager over there. And, it's always a thrill to have Finny on. Thanks for joining us, Finny.
Finny Kuruvilla: It's great to be with you. Thanks, John. Thanks, Richard.
Richard Cunningham: Yeah. Finny I was looking back to your podcast archives, and this is your fifth official FDI podcast to be on. And, you know, if we were to go back and probably mined the data of all of the faith driven investor videos, conference, talks, podcast, I mean, you might be our most quoted individual. So it's hard to think of many people who have done as much for the faith driven investing movement as you have. And I also just love, you know, John, I don't know about you, but when they look at me, it's Richard Cunningham, comma, you know, breathing adult. But for Finny Kuruvilla it is Finny Kuruvilla at medical doctor, PhD, co-chief investment officer, senior portfolio manager, managing director, founding member of Eventide. As you said, so just what a joy to have you on and thank you for all the contributions, Finny, that you make to the broader ecosystem.
Finny Kuruvilla: Well, hey, thanks, Richard. And one of the things that I want to say in response to that very, very flattering introduction is we have benefited so much from the collaborative spirit that especially a driven investor has brought to the field. I truly believe that that's something that honors God in that we're supposed to be supporting one another, encouraging one another. And I just want to thank all of you for setting a high bar and showing us leading the way and what that looks like. So kudos to you all.
Richard Cunningham: Appreciate that. Well, let's have some fun today guys. Finny, you're catching us in this kind of theme of we're unpacking conference talks that we're giving, you know, recording to say on March 20th. This podcast will drop on Monday, March 25th. But a couple months ago, at the end of January, you gave this remarkable talk titled Emptying the Storehouses at the Faith of an investor annual conference. And we get to bring you on to kind of pull out some of the threads of that talk. And so if maybe for those that weren't with us at the conference or haven't gotten to check out your video yet, which will be all over the internet soon, maybe kind of unpack it a little bit and we'll camp out there for a while.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, sure. So this is a talk that is very much deep in my heart. In the talk, I didn't actually get to give some of the backstory to it, but maybe I'll do some of that now before recapping some of the talk. I was born and raised in Southern California, and my dad worked for an organization called World Vision, which a lot of, you know, it's a humanitarian, humanitarian relief and development organization. It actually was my first job that I had when I was 16 years old, answering the telephones there. And one of the things that I did while I was working there was, you get to have your eyes opened to the plight of the global poor, and you get to see through videos. In my case, I wasn't there out on the field. But through videos you get to see how millions of people live in different places all over the developing world. And it was such an illuminating experience to be able to see that. And then you step out of your world from World Vision, and then you're now in Southern California, in LA and Pasadena, and you see the disparity there. While I was in college, I was very involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I still am, but while I was there, we did a Bible study through a passage where people go to John the Baptist and they say, hey, John, what does it mean to repent? And he gives a few points of what repentance looks like. But one of the points that he mentions is you who have two tunics should give to the one who has none. And I remember when I read that and study that, it just cut me to the heart because I thought, wow, am I really living like that? And I remember going, thinking about that passage in the light of what I was doing about vision and thinking again about the disparity, opening my closet, seeing that I wasn't living consistent with that teaching from John the Baptist, who's talking about the beginning of repentance. This is an advanced Christianity. Advance on God is the beginning of repentance. And so that ended up setting me on a trajectory of asking questions. Why don't we talk about this as much as I think we should in the church today? And are we potentially sweeping under the rug some of the harder teachings that in some ways are? Be the most pressing for us who are living in one of the most prosperous, if not the most prosperous, economies of all time. So that was some of the background that formed me when I was in college. Specifically, the talk that I gave at this Empty the Storehouses FDI conference was on the sermon on the Mount and basically advocating that the sermon on the Mount is the place where we see the most direct teaching on how we're supposed to be looking at money and the concept of treasures on Earth. One of the things that Jesus tells us is he says very plainly, very clearly, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. And he says, that's where moth consumes or rust destroys, where thieves break in and steal. He says, instead we're supposed to put our treasures in heaven. And then he explains the rationale by saying, where your treasure is, there your heart is also. He goes on to say, no one can serve two masters. Either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the other one and despise the other. Can't serve God and mammon. So that was the main text that I focused on. And one of the things that we took away and unpacked out of that is we ought to be taking that as face value as we possibly can. So I mentioned a couple of direct applications. So number one is we want to be investing in a way that's directed at a goal. So if we're investing we shouldn't be just accumulating these piles of money. I think that's something that's easy to fall into if one is a prosperous individual. And if one lives in a place like the United States, where people are just kind of hoarding money and it's easy to stop it in this place, or that we are supposed to be goal directed with our investing. If somebody says, hey, I'm saving to buy a house or start a business, great, let's have that mentality. Let's not have the mentality of the person who's building the second bar. The second application that I talked about was we don't want to be investing and take advantage of other people. And it's hopefully something that especially. With Faith Driven Investors. We've talked a lot about this theme over the years, and I know you all thought very deeply about this as well, which is that investing, it should be something where we're blessing others through that, not merely extracting value from others. And one of the passages that I think is very illuminating here is from Deuteronomy, where God says, don't bring the earnings of prostitution into the temple because it's an abomination to him. So God wants money that comes in his treasury not from sinful activities, but from activities that are building up the community. And so putting into practice love your neighbor, even in our investing, is a first order activity. And then I also mentioned investing just isn't about the negatives. It ought to be about the positives as well. And we can support with our investing both the redemptive good and the common good. The redemptive good is, of course, advancing the church, advancing the kingdom, furthering the gospel, evangelism, discipleship. Common good would be helping people to be clothed, to be fed, to be whole in terms of not suffering from disease. And so that at a high level was the goal of the talk and some of the key points there. And that's something that I think we always need to be pressing into and always reminding ourselves of some of those basics.
John Coleman: Yeah. And that's you know, what's really interesting is this is a topic I've been thinking about a little bit lately as well, and I actually started thinking about it for a World Fishing conference. So we've gotten to know Edgar Sandoval a little bit and just love Edgar, love world fishing. I mean, the mission that they're on is phenomenal. And their leadership right now, I think is extraordinary. And they asked me to come and give a talk on money, how believers should look at money. And I love that sermon on the Mount passage. You know, there are well over 2000 references to money in the Bible. Many of them are cautionary statements like the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And yet God also clearly gives certain people in the Bible money to steward for his purposes. And it's actually one of the blessings or tools that he offers them in order to forward his purpose. Abraham would be one of the first big examples of that, for example, or David in the New Testament. The examples are a bit more scarce, but even someone like Nicodemus could use financial resources for God's purposes. And so the question I think for believers is what are you doing with that? And are you paying as conscious a set of attention to money as one of the blessings that God can give you as your other talents? And I think one of the things that I find at least is consistently people neglect this investing area. You know, there are really only three things you can do with money. You can give it away, you can help others with it, you can spend it or you can invest it. There's not I mean, savings is just investing without any return. So there's not much else you can do with it. And Christians spend a ton of time thinking about how they give away their money, even if it's not a lot of what they give away. We spend a decent amount of time thinking about how we spend it, but I think the average Christian doesn't think as much about the way in which they invest it, even though for many people that's actually a bigger pool of capital than they're giving or spending, right, for a lot of people. And anyway, I just think it's a fascinating distinction that many Christians have drawn where they just they seek return, maybe even just to build this pile without purpose, as you described it, with their investments. But at the same time, I think God has really called us to pay attention every dollar and to make it purposeful, both in terms of the use that you'd have for it. But also, if I'm deploying this capital, like there should be some intersection with the Great Commandments or the Great Commission in the way that I deploy that capital as you're referencing, whether that's just staying away from the bad things, prostitution, trafficking, gambling, you know, things that are addictive, but also leaning into creating a more flourishing world for others. And I think that's where Eventide has been such a leader in that space. But I think it's just fascinating that Christians have not reflected deeply on that historically, or maybe as deeply as we need to.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. You know, it's fascinating what you mentioned there about some of those examples of individuals who did have financial resources. You pointed to Abraham, and he certainly be a good example of that. There is actually, in the New Testament, a fascinating passage. It's in First Timothy chapter six, where Paul specifically addresses the wealthy that are in the church, and he tells them what they're supposed to do. He says, don't be haughty. And he says, don't put your hopes in your money, but instead do good. Be rich in good works. Be generous and ready to share. So, you know, he's contemplating the fact that there are already, at that time, plenty of people who have wealth. Another example would be John Mark, and we know that it was his home that the believers gathered in while they were in Jerusalem. And these individuals who had these larger homes tended to be those who would be the hosts, the patrons of the church. There was a very, very important function that the church required and needed in those early years. There were no church buildings or things like that for centuries to come. And so I think it's something that is very good for us to remember. Which is that we're not saying wealth is evil or bad or anything like that. This is not a call to condemn people or anything like that, but it's a call to ask and hopefully challenge one another to say, are we truly doing good? Are we truly rich in good works with our wealth, and our wealth is on us now, has tremendous capacity to be a force for good or force for evil. And so I think even in the New Tetament, we see some of those admonitions and encouragements.
John Coleman: And I'll let Richard push us forward. But I will say, you know, the one thing that occurs to me even in that passage that you're referencing, or the two passages that you reference, is it's not necessarily a bad thing or mindsets around wealth and the way in which we use it can be evil or can be a bad thing, but there's never really a call to just store it up. And then at the end of your life, do something good with it. I think this is one of the traps we do fall into, like you said, is building this big pile saying, oh, what I'm good at is making it as big as possible. And then at the end of my life, I'm going to give it away over time. And I think rather everyone is called to start right this moment, thinking about the way wealth is used for the kingdom in the way it's stewarded for God's purposes, rather than just, you know, those of us who have proven some proficiency at kind of making wealth bigger, which is what investments is, you know, doing that for no purpose, right? Rather than deploying it according to those precepts right away.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, that's exactly right. I think it's Ron Ballou who has this quote where he says, do your giving while you're living, so you're knowing where it's going. And I like that concept because we know there are so many examples of individuals who have a lot of wealth, and instead of deploying it while they're alive, they put it in some foundation. And this is something that I was actually just reading about. The foundations take a life of their own and often end up doing activities contrary to the wishes of the person who left the wealth to that foundation in the beginning. It's actually the rule, not the exception. Or often things go haywire, and straying from the purposes that the individual who acquired the wealth really intended there. So I think it's a great reminder for us, and I truly believe that that is the paradigm that Jesus is setting here is like, now give now while you're alive. So in that treasure ahead of you, I don't let it be corrupted here on this earth. Send it ahead and store it up for a bright future in the life to come.
Richard Cunningham: Yeah, finance that. You use the word at the end of your conference talk. It's the arbitrage opportunity, right? Our stores of treasure here on Earth are in decay. So trade it now for something that lasts forever and just the ultimate arbitrage opportunity. I love the way you put it. All right, guys, well, that's fun to hear you riff on just for the sake of time. Let's keep on moving down the line. And so we'll go back to some of those practical applications at the end, talking about those opportunities to promote good and flourishing, the common good, the redemptive good. Finny you were kind of alluding to. But for now, we want to hit on Finny. Your last FDI podcast appearance was roughly seven months ago, August of 2023. You and John had this wonderful conversation on all that was taking place in the world of health care investing and M&A markets being drier. But yet the S&P was, you know, just charging on with the likes of Meta and Amazon and Google, among others, the AI frenzy. But just love to kind of hear you guys. You know, this is not a marks in the market podcast. But Vinnie, we'd be remiss not to have you at least weigh in kind of with what, Eventide. Seeing what you're seeing and kind of maybe since your last FDI podcast appearance as we closed out 2023, have kind of made it into the first quarter here of 24 of just what's going on from the Eventide vantage point. What are you guys seeing? I know health care has always been a massive focus of you all. So maybe camp out there a little bit as well.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, a high level. We've seen a lot even in the early months of 2024. Just a couple of themes and notable points here. You correctly noted that there was a lot of uncertainty in 2023, and the general consensus was that there would be a recession, but instead there was no recession and the S&P just motored higher. That was one of the stories of the year that it motored higher, despite the fact that there was high inflation in the fed kept raising interest rates. There's still a lot of uncertainty with the economy and consensus right now is that there'll be about a 40% chance of recession over the next 12 months. I put that with the giant asterisks because the economists were generally wrong last year. And there's a reason why economics is called the dismal science. It's often just very, very difficult to forecast the economy. And the joke is, of course, that economists have predicted nine of the last five recessions.
Richard Cunningham: That's awesome, I love that.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. And right now what we're seeing is an interesting phenomenon where inflation is certainly come down compared to last year. But the S&P continues to track higher. It's almost at 5200 as we speak right now really defying most expectations. There's still a lot of debate about why that's happening and why the economy is as resilient as it's been. We've been in the camp that you shouldn't buy the rhetoric of there's going to be recession, partly because it's such a novel, such. We've been in in the last couple of years, with the economy being released from all the Covid restrictions, and there's just not good models that anybody can point to, in our view, that have the kind of confidence that should make us pound the table in either direction. So that, thankfully has worked pretty well. And overall we've seen that. Generally speaking, the economy, if there aren't shocks, tends to do pretty well. And the innovation and the skills of the free market and what we know about businesses, they do pretty well about navigating through hard times. And when everybody's talking about a recession, usually it's not going to happen because there's a lot of belt tightening that's already gone on. One of the great I think, questions that we're going to understand over the next year is what has been the role of this productivity number. So there's this very mysterious number. It's actually easy to understand conceptually, but it's hard to measure empirically. So productivity is how much does a given worker how much does their output increase year over year. So I use the analogy of a person who works at a donut store and they're making donuts. And if they can make 100 donuts a day in 2023 and in 2024, and they can make 103 donuts a day, their productivity has grown by 3% year over year, and it seems like one of the reasons that the economy has been able to do well, despite the inflation, is that we've been more productive than people have anticipated than economists anticipated. There's a whole lot of reasons why that might be true, but I think one of them is not so much. AI is starting to play a role, but it's probably a bit early to attribute the productivity improvements to AI. But it's that there was so much belt tightening and so much concern about a recession, and companies were getting lean and mean through all of the doom and gloom rhetoric there. In that type of setting, you can actually and you typically would expect even that productivity would do well because everybody is ready and there's not a lot of excess. And so that type of phenomenon is probably what's been at play and why the economy has done so well, and in general, why the more people talk about recession and the more people that are fearful out there, you actually in the back of your head should be thinking, okay, good. I'm glad that there's that fear that's out there. And the other famous adage is that the market likes to climb the wall of worry, and it descends the slope of hope. And there's definitely been a robust wall of worry that the market has been climbing over the last couple of years.
John Coleman: Between that and the blue quota, I'm getting a new appreciation for Finney's ability to rhyme and create memorable markets.
Finny Kuruvilla: You know.
John Coleman: Finney, I would just say I don't know how you think about it in general. I'm so skeptical of people trying to time markets without a specific reason, a time. Right, like, you know, right now, for example, we're super cautious about office real estate, but there's this specific set of context around that that makes you nervous about that sector, that particular asset class where you can identify, I think, generalized concerns about recession, market timing, cash on hand. It's so difficult to predict in my mind. And if you look historically, by and large, just continuing to allocate in the way that you would with the tranches of, you know, you want to diversify your asset classes, you want to be thoughtful about the way in which you position a portfolio. But if you do that and you just stay in markets, typically that's the best solution over the long run, rather than seeking to time more aggressively without a specific conclusion. And that's been my push to folks right now. I mean, this is not financial advice on this podcast, obviously, but, you know, it's very easy to get whipsawed by all these predictions. Market timing is notoriously difficult. And just as often as you get out and avoid a downswing, you miss a major upswing. And I'm with you. There are just so many long term reasons to be confident that, at least in the United States and in a fair number of other economies, the long term trends are oriented towards greater productivity, whether that's AI, robotics, which is more of a real time thing. I think even in the industrial space, things like that, all these technological innovations are oriented towards improving productivity and output, and there's really been no major setback on those. So I continue to feel the way that you feel, which is don't overthink the timing of markets, or at least that's the way that I would put it. Stick to what you feel confident in in your allocations, and make bets on those specific things where you feel you have a good understanding of where things are headed.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. One of my mentors, who I've actually never met but I call my mentor because he made such a big impact on me through his books is Peter Lynch, and Peter Lynch has this great concept, which is that more money has been lost trying to time and dance around corrections than in the corrections themselves, that all of the artful positioning is not actually hostile and adverse to one's net returns. I mean, there's so many ways that one can show that we've got a lot of charts, and I have a whole lot, actually. We'll talk about addresses this, but you're absolutely right. And rather than timing the market, it's time in the market that's a better predictor of your long term returns. And you correctly noted that there are typically a handful of days. In a year that are going to be these massive upside drivers. But if you miss those days and I actually gave a talk on this, that this entire archive, if you miss those days, those handful of days in the year, I don't have the exact number on top of my head, but your returns are a fraction of what it would be then if you are just simply staying in the market throughout it all. So yeah, it's it's a very important lesson to learn that most people haven't learned really well. And I hope those timeless principles would be things that we would go back to again and again and remind ourselves that despite the fear, despite all of the rhetoric out there in general, it's the more boring strategies that tend to outperform the more sophisticated ones.
Richard Cunningham: Yeah, I've heard it before. You got to be right a lot of times in terms of when to get out, when to get back in, the highs and lows and all of it. Might as well just be right once and stay in. What about on the health care side of things in terms of a very capital intensive, highly innovative field? You know, this is something you and John got into in your recent podcast. These fields tend to be hit pretty hard by the interest rate environment, as they need capital infusion as they're oftentimes not profitable. Even tide has a big focus in that space on the health care side of things. What are you guys seeing there?
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, the space thankfully has come back a lot since we spoke last, and it's been really good to see that we're starting to come out of some of that very fearful capitulation that was happening, particularly in the October 2023 time period. So it's been nice to see that. I still think we have a long way to go to come back to even be average. So we have this odd situation right now where the so-called Magnificent Seven, Meta, Amazon, Google, those types of companies are trading at very rich multiples and very lofty valuations. But we're still in the situation that a lot of those smaller cap, more capital intensive industries like biotech are still considerably lower than they would normally be valued. And so that's a first observation there. Second observation, I would say, is that on the innovation side, it continues to actually accelerate. And so even in the last couple of months, there have been a number of significant advances on the obesity front. So we're closely watching this field. I think everybody knows now about [....] and all that. That's just the very first gen medications. Those are injectable. We know that those medications have pretty serious liabilities, chief of which is that when you lose weight, you lose both fat and muscle. And it's widely appreciated that you don't want to be losing muscle mass in the same way as losing fat. But that's what these medications do, is they're dropping both together. There's some very interesting innovations that are happening there where it'll still take some time to work out a lot of the details, but. I'm confident that over time, we're actually to get to medications that are going to be actually enhancing or at least stabilizing muscle mass, and it'll be selective loss of fat. So that's a pretty exciting development that is still in the clinical trial stage, but it's something that we're actively investing in. Another highlight here that I'd like to touch on just briefly, because I mentioned this last time, was we talked about this Car-T concept, which is to remind everyone that is. But Car-T is basically a way where you engineer your own immune cells to attack cancer cells. And I told the story of a little girl named Emily Whitehead, who was the first pediatric patient ever treated with one of these Car-T approaches where basically they do a blood draw, they take out your immune cells, they infect your immune cells with a virus in a dish, and that virus retrains your immune system to attack the cancer that's inside of the body. You grow up those cells and then re infuse them back into the patient. And I told that story about her and she literally had her leukemia. She was going to die. She was on her way to go to hospice. And within 23 days her leukemia disappeared after receiving treatment. So that has now been extended. And this is like hot off the press just last month. So February of 2024, somebody said, hey, maybe we can use that technology to go and attack the cells that are creating autoimmune disease and in particular the disease called lupus. And they published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is the top journal in the medical world that they were able to induce these patients into remission for one year. No disease, no steroids. It's pretty amazing that now we can train the immune system to attack the bad cells of the immune system that are causing these autoimmune conditions. So it's not FDA approved yet. It's it's still in clinical trials. And so we'll hope that this crosses the finish line. But how exciting is that? I mean, just amazing. And then just last week. So again very hot off the press just down the street [....] At Mass General Hospital right here in downtown Boston. They use that same technology for brain cancer. So brain cancer is one of the more deadly forms of cancer that's very difficult to treat. And what we know now is that this same type of therapy, works not just for liquid tumors like leukemia, which is what Emily had, but now we're seeing it work for solid tumors as well. So again, it's early stage, not FDA approved, but incredibly exciting here. And so we are in and I think what is easily characterized as the golden age of taking immunology and harnessing our immune system to address very serious diseases like cancer and autoimmunity. So I am just thrilled to see this innovation that's happening at a very brisk pace. And my full hope and confidence is that as this accelerates, we're going to get more and more of these therapies that cross the finish line to FDA approval, and our health care is going to continue to get better and better. So very exciting days for us here in the biotech and health care world.
John Coleman: Man, I always leave these conversations like very encouraged. Finny not all of our investment topics are quite this encouraging, both in terms of, you know, it's such a natural intersection with this idea of human flourishing. Right? And even, you know, even when I like, think about the New Testament in such a simplistic and stupid way, a lot of what Jesus did when he was working miracles was helping people with their physical ailments, right? As almost an analogy to what could be done for the soul. Right? But also to just care for people physically here on earth. And you get to work in a space where that's the goal every single day for everyone who's working in this market is to try and make human life better. Maybe that's a nice way to transition into the way that you guys think about faith and values in the context of the portfolios that you're building. Again, there is this natural intersection with human flourishing, particularly in health care, which you're so focused on. But how does Eventide think about the incorporation of values? Think about the promotion of human flourishing investing that makes the world rejoice in the context of your portfolios. And how are you all thinking about innovating on that every day?
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah, it's a great question, John, and it's something that all of us who work in asset management, in any kind of faith driven way, ought to be constantly challenging us to. We would all concede that we're in the early days of figuring all this out, and we're trying to develop frameworks that are better and better and stronger and stronger, that respond to all of the dynamism of the markets. And we all know that markets are living, breathing animals, and we better be responding as well and sharpening our tools and our ethics. There's a lot to be said here. There's both issues, specific areas that we're investing a lot of time in. And then there's frameworks and heuristics that we're trying to refine in terms of how we look at management. So. On the issues specific side of things. There's a lot of talk right now about IVF and stem cells, all that which is in the news. And how do we bring pro-life values into these questions here. So we've been doing interviews with different ethicists. This week, in fact, I interviewed a well-known ethicists on the issue of life and how to think about that. I would say a lot of people who would say that life begins at conception. Haven't thought very deeply about the implications of that. For example, stem cells and IVF, things like that. So we want to be really good and sharp in that. It's an area where I think we're probably just underdeveloped in general. We collectively the church are underdeveloped in general there. So there's issue specific sets, and we would like to hopefully put out some whitepapers and videos as we learn more about how to hopefully elevate the whole field and community with us as we learn together. And then there's the framework and heuristic side of things. How do we take our own learnings and bring that to bear and how we assess, for example, management teams or how different companies are interacting with? Save the environment or broader society, even the environment. We have a fantastic panelist here who covers energy. And how do we think about, as Christians all the questions around pollution and carbon and all of that. And it's of course a huge field here, but we need to have views on that. And it's easy to be reactive and to say, well, you know, this group over there, they're hyper concerned about carbon credits or what have you. And they're maybe not like minded to us in terms of some of their values. And so they must be wrong. So we're going to go to some other side. How do we come up with good values here on some of these and good heuristics around what does it look like to be responsible with respect to some of these environmental questions? And I think that we've done some fantastic work even in the last six months, I would say especially probably be a topic of a whole podcast to get into some of the innards of that. But we've been investing quite a bit of time and energy, and to being able to assess our company well in terms of how they are interacting with the environment there. So those would be two of the areas that we're refining and improving on.
John Coleman: Yeah. One of the topics you touched on, and I know there a lot of folks prefer this avoid embrace engage framework. There are a bunch of different frameworks. I think they're helpful. But you know, there are different ones that work. We've been thinking a lot more about this engagement topic, which you're highlighting, which is, you know, we have the ability, particularly in public markets, I think, to speak into societal wide questions, both generally, as you mentioned, through thought leadership, but specifically through the shareholding that we have in companies. Right, which has been a focus for us on the public equity side. The price for that is, I think you have to be really excellent at what you do to build a voice on the engagement topics from an investment point of view, which is why I think Eventide almost has the permission to speak into these. It's what we're seeking to cultivate as well. But I think my observation is that in cling more to the avoid side of the spectrum, historically, Christians have often missed an opportunity for what I'll call constructive engagement. We've been willing to beat up on topics aggressively, but we haven't been willing to engage in the really thoughtful debates about these topics to articulate a cogent perspective. And, you know, this idea of stem cells and IVF, for example, is one where there are obviously a huge number of well-meaning people on different sides of this debate who are going through extremely difficult life circumstances. Right. This is not a light topic and apart from it maybe the Catholic Church, which has actually articulated some principles around this in a reasonably thoughtful way. I think many of those of us in other branches, as a church, I'm a Protestant, have not been as thoughtful about our intellectual positions. And so I think one of the things I'm encouraged about that you're talking about Finny, and even your own personal thought leadership that I hope others will take up, is how do we lean into these big issues of the day in the areas in which we're investing, and be thoughtful about articulating a cogent set of principles for human flourishing around those, as we are our investment thesis. And I think if the great investors in the Christian worlds could do that, our ability to influence culture in a positive way would be enhanced greatly.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. I will say a couple of things on this. And like you, I'm not a Catholic. I have a lot of respect for the Catholic Church, but I'm not personally one who would be considered as Roman Catholic. It's something where one of the things that I have seen, that they have done well, and they could teach the rest of us some good lessons, and especially those of us who work on the investing side, is they have a way of thinking that I would call maybe more historically aware and more of a sense of building on that what's come before us, you know, some of the times because of a false understanding of sola scriptura, it's not actually legit it's sola scripture to say the Bible is the only authority. True sola scripture says the Bible is the only infallible authority. But there are plenty of other authorities, hopefully the pastors and teachers in your home, your parents. We read books. We listen to people online. I mean, there's varying levels of authority here. The correct understanding of soul scriptura, which I do subscribe to, is that the Bible is the only infallible authority. And I think sometimes because we've misunderstood sola scriptura, we believe that we kind of have to like, reinvent the wheel or just like read the Bible and come up with something, you know, spontaneously, as opposed to what's actually a more faithful understanding of the Scripture, which the reformers and the radical reformers and everybody pointed to, which is that Scripture is the only infallible authority. But we are fools if we don't try to learn from those who come before us. And I think that's where the Catholic Church is, ahead of the Protestant community, in the sense that they've learned and they've built and they've developed frameworks and pressure tested them. And that's something that I want to see more of in the Protestant world in general, is us give more thought to, hey, let's learn from those who've gone before us and not be so chronologically arrogant that we believe that. We've got it all right. And everybody who's gone before us hasn't thought through those issues, because they have. There's been very, very good work on these issues before us. And I think first, to make the investment of time to read and understand well what those who've gone before us have done and said is step number one, noting. Step number two is to somehow put together as best as we can and memorialize our understandings and whitepapers and podcasts and different discussions so that we can continue to move the ball forward in the process. And world is occasionally done that the Chicago statement would be an example of that. And biblical inerrancy is an example of where people will come together and put together these working group statements like, hey, this is what we think inerrancy means. And and even that will get revised and pressure tested. And that's not violating sola Scriptura. That's actually honoring the forefathers of the faith that have come before us. And so I think those will be some of the challenges that I would give to the investing community.
Richard Cunningham: Man, this is awesome. Do you guys riff on it? Kind of reminds me in ways where, hey, I'm the individual investor right now listening to you guys riff on this and it's like, I wish I had access to John Coleman or Finny Kuruvilla on my shoulders. I'm thinking about the investment decisions I'm making, and I think eventide put out this post about engaging with Pinkston to interview Christians out there. And it's just I think the push to everyone is, hey, you can engage with your advisor on these topics, and I think your survey results said 63% of Christians have never discussed values based investing with their financial advisor, even though 88% want to align their investments with their values. And so I think, you know, before we close here and FInny talk about what you're kind of learning in Scripture, I think it's just a great push to the every day and faith driven investor or the advisor out there to say, hey, these aren't conversations that you have to reserve. Just to John and Finny on the Faith Driven Investor podcast, these are things you can lean into and your next kind of financial advisor update meeting.
Finny Kuruvilla: Yeah. The other part of that survey was that 62% of Christians are willing to make a switch to another adviser who offer investments that resonate with their values. And so it's hopefully a wake up call that this is a time where people want their investments to be in line with their values. And you might even lose business as they go to another firm or individual who can speak to their heart values. Their most investors are more interested in those higher level conversations than they are hearing about beta and alpha and sharp values and things like that. Like that's not necessarily where people's hearts out. Of course, everybody wants competency. People want to know that their finances are being deployed and invested in a responsible way. But I think where the faith driven community, including the financial advisory community, ought to step up is to say, like, let's differentiate ourselves from the robo advisors and everybody else by being able to engage at a heart level with some of these issues that are very, very important to clients.
Richard Cunningham: Yeah, that's so good. Good words. Well, Finny, take us home. What's the Lord been teaching you in Scripture lately? Maybe for you. All of team Kuruvilla and your wonderful family would love to hear that.
Finny Kuruvilla: I love this question, and I really appreciate that you all end the podcast with this question. Yeah, I'll give you a short distillation of one of the themes of the last as a year of my life, but I went to a seminar. It was an all day seminar a few months ago that was put on by a group that specializes in going into hard situations where there's been some kind of a breakdown, a church split, or a business that's falling apart as a Christian group. And they go in and they do about 30 of these engagements a year, and they go in and try to mediate reconciliation, healing and unity to where there's brokenness. And I'm in my late 40s right now, and I have sadly been watching a lot of my college friends go through divorces and a lot of hard experiences there. It's sad to watch, and these are people who are in the church and know well the teachings of Scripture here. One of the things that I've learned is that. True conflict resolution and true unification of the church and families is a skill. It's not something that comes naturally to any of us. It's something that we need to be trained and prepared. And again, I wish I could talk about this for a lot longer here, but just very, very briefly. We are supposed to be the ministers of reconciliation. That's our job description, if you will, that Paul uses in second Corinthians is that Jesus even says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. How do you know that we're children of God? The children look like the father, right? They look like the parents. They had the same skin color, hair, all that. Our resemblance to the father is that we're supposed to be agents of peace. Because the father brings peace to the world. That's supposed to be one known for. Unfortunately, it's not usually the case. That's what people think of reflexively. When they think of the Christians. They often think of divisions and splits and fightings and all that. And I am more and more convinced that because it's a when not an if we're all going to be having conflict in our organizations or families, etc., this ought to be a skill that is part of Christianity one on one, and we ought to be pressing so far into this that you can't be a person who's been sitting in a church for more than a year or two without having gone through some kind of formal, rigorous training on this. I know that sounds like a bold claim, but I really believe it. And that as I've gone through this training and read a book on it and really had my eyes open to the fact that here I am, in my late 40s, being raised in the church, that I hadn't gone through this. And as I've gone through this, I thought, wow, I could have had a more successful 20s, 30s and early 40s had I had these skills in my tool bag. And there are very much learnable skills that require growth and challenge. But I think this is one of the great needs of our world today, is to have the Christian community rise up to the challenge of being peacemakers and ministers of reconciliation, and treating it like a discipline, just like we would treat any other discipline. You don't learn naturally medicine, you get mentored and trained, and that you have to go through classes and exams and all that. It's the same thing with this. Maybe not as daunting as having to go through medical school, but it's a skill that we need to embrace there. So I've been thinking a lot about that and how we and the church ought to be much, much stronger on that and encourage that early on.
John Coleman: And I love that concept, and I know you're talking about that at the individual level, but I even think at the social level, if you think about the instances over the last, you know, 30, 40 years where Christians were deeply respected for the work that they did, it was often in reconciliation, whether that's Bishop to in South Africa, whether it's the US civil rights movement where Reverend King and Andrew Young and others leaned into their faith and as a tool for reconciliation across differences. And it can be, you know, just such an inspiring thing for Christians to navigate.
Finny Kuruvilla: It really can. John. And let me just say one final comment on this. Jesus right after that says, you're going to be the city on the hill, salt of the earth. They will see your good works and glorify the father in heaven. It's through that kind of activity that the world is mesmerized with the power of Jesus, right? We live in a very broken, divided, hostile world. There's poor dialog. It's just it's a mess. This is winsome. This is attractive. This is something that we can actually gain a social capital that we currently don't have. So yeah. Amen to what you just said.
John Coleman: Finny Kuruvilla Eventide Asset Management. Awesome work you guys continue to do. Finny you've just been such a almost a founder in this space beyond even tide in such a pioneer here. I'm always humbled by your ability to reference scripture, usually in the original languages, which I know I definitely can't do, I'm sure Richard can do, and it's just such a blessing to our audience to have you on. Thank you so much for being here. And thank you, Richard, for hosting.
Finny Kuruvilla: Thank you John.