Dealflow | April 28, 2017

Aspiration app helps consumers track the impact of their spending choices

ImpactAlpha
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ImpactAlpha

Online bank Aspiration has launched a new app that quantifies the social and environmental effects of shoppers’ purchases.

The goal is to empower U.S. consumers, who spend $36 billion every day, to base decisions on companies’ track records on employee wages, commitment to renewable energy and other factors.

Aspiration’s app analyzes more than 75,000 data points from 5,000 companies and assigns each company a score from one to 100 on its social and environmental performance.

HiP Investor is one of the sources of the ratings, data and metrics that power the app, which also includes information from SEC filings, Thomson-Reuters and reports volunteered by the companies themselves.

“There has been a huge crying demand from people for a long time to be able to score their spending,”

Andrei Cherny, Aspiration’s CEO told Wired. Aspiration is aiming to cultivate consumer awareness: Users can applaud or shame companies by tweeting directly from the app.

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Photo credit: Aspiration