I would not advise using Ethex to invest in ethical investments. It saddens me to say this, but they are not a serious organisation.
Over the years, I have pursued ethical investment through various groups including Energy4All, Abundance, Ecotricity, Energise Africa, Ethex, Thrive and Triodos.
The only manager which I have ever had any real issues with is Ethex.
I first used Ethex to invest back in 2019. I have recently had several issues and I do not want to use them any more as either agents or registrars since I cannot trust them with my money. Fortunately, some groups using Ethex such as Grimsby Community Energy also offer the option to invest directly.
Here’s why i don’t want to use Ethex any more:
1 At the beginning of 2024, I decided to buy a house. In order to do this, Ineeded to recoup some investments. I contacted the various groups named above, including Ethex. Now, in January 2025, basically a year later, I have purchased my house but I am still waiting to hear back from Ethex regarding the recoup of some of my investments. I reagd that as unacceaptbale, escpailly since I got a yes or no answer from all the other groyups 6 months ago.
2 As part of investing nowadays one must go through the process of AML (anti money laundering checks). Ethex wanted to do this when I made a new investments, as is normal. I sent the documents they required by post and then Ethex lost the documents for two weeks. First of all I was fobbed off, then after making a complaint, I learnt that the address they use for correspondence is shared and my private documents were left unattended for two weeks in a shared mail room before being picked up, in a clear GDPR breach. Ethex assured me nobody else had acces to the documents but that is patently a lie if it is a shared address. Furthermore, they didn’t even apologise for their mistake until I pressed them to do so. Their rationale for the error was that they are a small organisation and that the person I was dealing with was new at their post – I’m not sure why any part of this explanation was supposed to make me feel better about their incompetence.
3 Regarding anther investment which I recouped, I asked for the repayment , then waited patiently then checked in three months later and it turned out Ethex had received the money but had negletced to transfer it to me. When they eventually did so, they didn’t even offer to pay the lost interest on £10,000. Again this is unacceptable.
For these three reasons, I do not regard Ethex as a serious organisation to trust with my money. This saddens me since I want to invest my money ethically on my criteria and even now in 2025, the options to do that are quite limited. Any one of these three errors would be forgivable, but not all three over the course of one year.
Therefore, as the opportunity arises I will reclaim my money and for future investments I will query with groups if I can invest in a way which does ot use Ethex as manager or registrar. Other registrars such as for example Neville have always been fine to deal with.
I hope Ethex actually become more professional and do not repeat these mistakes again.= with other customers.
Finance with Ethics 