SEC Charges Advisory Firm Inspire Investing With Misleading Investors Regarding Its Investment Strategy

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Idaho-based investment adviser Inspire Investing LLC with making misleading statements and for compliance failures related to the execution of its “biblically responsible investing” strategy. According to the SEC’s order, Inspire Investing represented that it used a data-driven methodology to evaluate companies and that it would not invest in companies that had “any degree of participation” in certain enumerated business practices that Inspire determined did not align with biblical values. However, the SEC’s order finds, from at least 2019 to March 2024, Inspire Investing in fact relied on a manual research process and did not typically perform research on individual companies to evaluate them for eligibility under its investing criteria.