SEATTLE, July 20, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Investment and product development leaders Josh Hile and Marshall Dunford today announced the formation of Citizen Mint, a new impact investing platform designed to help investors generate both financial returns and positive social and environmental impact .
The new company enters the market at a time when interest in impact investing is at its peak. The Global Impact Investing Network, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing, estimated in 2020 that the total impact market was greater than $715 billion, a tenfold increase over the past seven years, and projected continued growth.
“The demand for investments, particularly among Gen X and Millennials, that align financial resources with personal interests and values is simply not being met in today’s market,” said Josh Hile, who will serve as Citizen Mint’s CEO and Chief Investment Officer. “We started Citizen Mint to provide a new avenue for investors to participate in private market projects that create financial returns while having a direct positive impact on the world.”
Younger investors represent an important source of wealth as well as a shift in how they view the world. Coldwell Banker reported that there were 618,000 “Millennial Millionaires” in 2019, and a Fidelity Charitable study released in 2022 found that 61 percent of Millennials say they currently participate in impact investing and 62 percent believe impact investing has more power to create change than traditional charity. . A 2019 Morgan Stanley survey also found that 95 percent of Millennials with over $100,000 in investable assets have an interest in sustainable investing.
Yet, for many, investments in private markets and real assets are out of reach, as they are often only available to institutional investors or clients of financial advisors with high minimum investment thresholds.
Instead of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies, Citizen Mint will focus exclusively on these investment opportunities in the private market. The company will use a proprietary process to source and conduct due diligence on high-value investment opportunities and provide an easy-to-use user interface that allows investors to select specific projects and areas of interest and monitor investment impact and performance.
Prior to launching Citizen Mint, Hile held investment and leadership roles at Russell Investments, and most recently, as director of investment strategy and research at Laird Norton Wealth Management, a $16 billion registered investment advisor (RIA) and trust company with deep expertise in impact. invest.
Joining Hile is Marshall Dunford, who will serve as chief technology officer. Prior to Citizen Mint, Dunford worked as a software engineer across a variety of industries, building new products, leading initiatives to increase scalability and security, and leading multiple projects from concept to millions of active users.
“At Citizen Mint, we are committed to creating positive change in the world by increasing access to impact investing,” Hile continued. “Our research tells us that there is a critical divide between how new investors want to invest and the options available to them. With Citizen Mint, we are bridging this gap by making it easier for more people to engage in private market investing that have positive societal and environmental consequences while at the same time providing a financial return.”
About Citizen Mint
Citizen Mint is founded in accessibility and impact. We started Citizen Mint because we saw that many impact investments in the private markets were inaccessible to the vast majority of investors. Every investment on the Citizen Mint platform is hand-picked and vetted by our team for the potential to provide both positive impact and financial return. We are here to open new and more direct ways to invest for impact. We hope you will join us. For more information, go to www.citizenmint.com
Media contact
Sam Butler, for Citizen Mint
206.788.6504
[email protected]
