Faith Groups Want Their Capital to Reflect Their Beliefs. But Does it? 

Morningstar’s most recent mapping of the sector puts the scale of that momentum in context. As of April 2026, it counted 853 faith-based funds worldwide holding around $169 billion in assets, split across US, Middle Eastern, Asian and European markets. That is meaningful growth but set against a global population of well over four billion people who identify with the two largest faith traditions covered in the report (Christianity and Islam) alone, it is a fraction of what the market could bear.  

Many of these funds are aimed at individual rather than institutional investors which means that faith organizations – estimated to manage trillions of dollars worth of assets globally – have even fewer options. Faith-based investors are not short of conviction. They are short of infrastructure, of well-designed products, and of a shared standard for what it actually means to invest in line with one’s faith. 

That gap in infrastructure was the reason 33 institutional faith-based asset owners, collectively responsible for at least $200 billion in assets, gathered at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris this April.  

The meeting brought together representatives from Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other traditions, all wrestling with a common problem: each was building its own approach to faith-consistent investing largely from scratch, with limited ability to learn from one another or to signal clearly to the investment industry what faith-aligned capital actually requires. The Paris gathering was less a conference than a working session, and it produced a clear mandate.  

Central to the discussion was a piece of research FaithInvest had just completed, Good Intentions 2026, which was launched at the Paris forum. It is the first study of its kind to assess real investment policies, 275 of them, drawn from faith-based organisations around the world, against a ten-criteria framework covering everything from governance and financial discipline to how well a policy verifies that investments actually align with the faith’s stated values.  

It is also the first attempt to set out, in a rigorous and consistent way, what a strong faith-consistent investment policy actually looks like, rather than leaving each organisation to define that for itself.  

The findings were sobering. Financial discipline scored consistently well across the sample; organisations know how to write a prudent investment policy, and boards take their fiduciary duties seriously. But verification of faith alignment, the part that actually distinguishes faith-consistent investing from conventional ethical investing, was the weakest area almost everywhere.  

Just 11 percent of policies reached what the framework calls a good foundation in FCI, and 39 per cent scored at only a minimal level. Not a single policy in the sample reached the top band. In other words, most faith-based organizations can show they are financially responsible. Far fewer can show, in any rigorous sense, that their money is actually doing what their faith asks of it.  

For a movement that talks a great deal about values, the research showed how far there still is to go in turning conviction into a documented, verifiable investment practice, and it is worth stressing that this is not a story about bad intentions. It is a story about a young movement that has grown faster than the tools and standards needed to support it. 

FaithInvest Executive Chair Dave Zellner said: “The financial discipline scores did not surprise me. Faith-based organisations have always taken their fiduciary duty seriously, and rightly so. What struck me was how few could actually demonstrate in their policy that their investments actually reflect their faith beliefs and values, beyond a list of what they excluded. Knowing what you will not invest in is not the same as knowing your money is doing what your faith asks of it. That is the gap we assert faith investors need to close.” 

It was this combination, a large and growing but fragmented movement, and hard evidence of exactly where it was falling short, that led the Paris participants to ask FaithInvest to go further than research.  

What they asked for was, in concept, fairly modest: somewhere faith groups could see what good practice actually looks like, learn from organizations further along the same road, and get an honest, independent read on their own policy rather than relying on internal assumptions that had rarely been tested against anyone else’s. In essence, what they asked for was a centre of excellence on faith-consistent investing – and that’s what we’re building now. 

Some of that already exists in smaller form. FaithInvest has been producing resources and reviewing organizations’ investment policies since it was founded in 2019 to support faiths to invest in line with their values. The new FCI Centre of Excellence, due to launch before the end of 2026, will greatly expand this work with additional tools, templates and case studies.  

None of this displaces the theological or pastoral dimension of faith-consistent investing, which remains, rightly, the province of each tradition and each institution. What has been missing is not conviction but the connective tissue around it: shared standards, peer comparison, and somewhere credible to go for an honest assessment and a roadmap for improvement. 

That is, in the end, the more interesting story than any single initiative. Faith-based investing is growing faster than the products and infrastructure built to serve it. The appetite among faith groups to align capital with belief is intensifying rather than fading, and the institutions best placed to act, churches, denominations, religious orders, foundations and faith-linked pension funds, are increasingly comparing notes rather than working in isolation, as the Paris gathering showed.  

“My hope is fairly simple,” Zellner adds. “I would like to see a finance officer at a small denomination, five years from now, to have the same tools and the same confidence as the largest faith-based asset owners in this space. That is not going to happen through good intentions alone. It happens through standards, through comparison, and through organizations being honest with themselves about where they stand.”  

What began as a research project on 275 investment policies has, in that sense, told us as much about where the whole sector still needs to go as it has about any one organization’s plans. The FCI ecosystem is expanding fast and our new FCI Centre of Excellence will provide the practical support faiths need as they seek to express their values in their capital. Our own plans aside, however, the trajectory is clear: a movement built on deep conviction is now starting to build the standards and shared infrastructure that conviction alone cannot supply.