Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini & Co., Inc., a Boston-based provider of social research for institutional investors, has announced that its benchmark Domini 400 Social Index (DSI 400) will be available later this month from Dow Jones as a live feed. KLD also announced that it will launch a broad-market index of 1,600 companies with screens similar to those in the DSI 400. The index provides detailed social research on more companies than any other existing social index.
The DSI 400 is a socially screened, capitalization-weighted index of 400 common stocks and is the first socially responsible investment index to be transmitted in real-time to news services, brokerage firms and individual investors.
The announcement of the live feed represents a significant win for the socially responsible investment industry. "Inclusion in Dow Jones Indices shows just how far we’ve come in 10 years in terms of acceptance of the concept of corporate social responsibility,” said Amy Domini, co-founder of KLD and president of Domini Social Investments in New York City.
"When we began this endeavor in 1990, there were only 38 socially responsible mutual funds, a handful of endowments with social screening and a relatively small number of investors who felt they could do some good with their money. Ten years later, socially responsible investing is widely accepted as a credible, profitable and mainstream approach to investing," Domini said.
The Dow Jones Index feed of the DSI 400 will be made available later this month through the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Wire services and news organizations are expected to make use of the real- time financial information and KLD said it plans to add the live feed to its own Web site at www.kld.com.
As for the expansion, "Investors need information on more than just a few hundred of the nation’s companies," said co-founder Steve Lydenberg. "We intend to provide them with complete social research on as many different companies as possible – small- to large-cap and everything in between," he said.
