Friday marked the launch of Ethiquette, an independent, bilingual Web platform dedicated to responsible investment (RI) and intended for individual investors.

Unveiled by Fabien Durif, professor at Université de Québec à Montréal, School of Management, and director of the latter’s Responsible Consumption Observatory (RCO), and Brenda Plant, senior consultant at Ellio, Ethiquette, provides interactive content that will enable investors to familiarize themselves with RI concepts and challenges through a mix of videos, testimonials and surveys.

According to Ethiquette’s developers, most RI resources are tailored to institutional investors. No currently existing platform provides individual investors with such a wealth of content as Ethiquette, including RI strategies, the strengths and weaknesses of each, local and international microfinance, and a listing of RI products available on the Canadian market.

“In addition to these tools, Ethiquette includes reference guides for browsers to point them in the direction of RI specialists, help them prepare for a meeting with a financial adviser, ensure that they ask the right questions and then choose the products best suited to their individual portfolios,” said Plant.

The new website follows in the wake of the findings of a study entitled “Québecers and Socially Responsible Investment: Portrait for 2014”, published in February of this year. According to this study, individual investors were found to be little aware of responsible investment (RI), and information available to them insufficient to elucidate the complexity of RI financial products.

Ethiquette has been developed to offset these observed shortcomings by enabling individuals to garner information about responsible investment and to empower them to take action.

Ethiquette was made possible through the support of Desjardins – Wealth Management, Fondaction CSN, Desjardins – Caisse d’économie solidaire, Fonds FTQ, Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and Climate Change Control (Québec), and Employment and Social Development Canada.