Ethics in Finance Award 2025: Honoring goal-based. investments

Awarded for Ethics in Finance

With Transparency and Fairness to Success

On May 28, 2025, this year’s Ethics in Finance Award was presented in a festive ceremony at the University of Neuchâtel. And while we didn’t take home first place, we are incredibly proud that QIO – Quantitative Investment Office – was honored as a runner-up, standing out against strong competition from the banking and fintech world.

Congratulations to all finalists, and a heartfelt thank-you to the jury for this meaningful recognition of our work.

Why this award means so much to us

In a financial world often shaped by opaque fee structures and conflicts of interest, we have deliberately chosen a different path. Our goal is to challenge — and rethink — the foundational principles behind today’s investment advice. We don’t just talk about “democratizing access to financial markets,” but about democratizing the benefits of financial markets.

Because enabling access is not enough. What matters is truly empowering people to build wealth independently, fairly, and self-directed — without being disadvantaged by hidden costs or unsuitable one-size-fits-all solutions.

Ethical advice means more than ethical investing

One of the most persistent misconceptions in the finance industry is equating “ethical investing” with “investing in ethically operating companies.” While the latter is undoubtedly important, we take a decisive step further:

We ask what ethical advice means for the investor!

💡 Are people being advised in a way that is ethically justifiable — for them, personally?

Sadly, the answer is often no. Many recommendations are driven by commission models, generic model portfolios, or shallow risk profiling — not by genuine concern for the individual investor’s outcome.

This is exactly where we see the greatest need for action. To us, ethical advice means:

► Putting people at the center

► Taking personal goals seriously

► Offering solutions — not selling products

► And: Conflict-free advice that empowers instead of exploiting

Our platform: www.goal-based.investments

With the launch of goal-based.investments in 2023/24, we introduced the first fully independent goal-based investment advisory platform in Switzerland. It offers unrestricted access to professional investment advice for everyone — and deliberately separates advice from execution to eliminate conflicts of interest.

Our approach:

► Goal-based advice — instead of arbitrary benchmarks

► Fair pricing — less wealth should not mean higher fees

► Fees as a function of expected return — adjusted to individual risk capacity

► Cash is a legitimate investment — we advise not only on ETFs, but also when liquidity makes strategic sense

Our mantra: “We care about what assets you hold, but not where you hold your assets.”

Financial Education as a Core Part of Our Mission

But we go even further: A key pillar of our model is financial education. We offer courses and events designed to help people navigate the jungle of influencer recommendations and traditional sales-driven advice — and to understand what’s ethically questionable about common advisory practices, and how it can be done better.

Through our work on this award project, one thing became crystal clear: 👉 If there's one thing we've learned, it's that far more independent financial education is needed.

Looking Ahead: We're Just Getting Started

Being named runner-up at the Ethics in Finance Award 2025 is not an endpoint for us — it’s motivation. Our vision remains to empower as many people as possible to pursue their financial goals independently and transparently through technology and expertise.

We hope our current users were rooting for us — and that they continue to share in our mission!

Toward fairer finance,

Lorenzo & Michael – together with the whole QIO team who made this possible