Investing With Integrity - Art Ally the "Father of B.R.I."
Art Ally is founder and President of the multi-billion-dollar Timothy Plan, the
nation’s leading biblically based, pro-life, pro-family investment company.
Timothy Plan offers 12 mutual funds and 7 ETFs that undergo stringent moral
screening criteria designed to avoid investing shareholders’ money in any
company that produces or participates in products/activities that are contrary
to a traditional biblical ethic. Read his story here.
Transcript
Well, welcome to the Investing with Integrity podcast. My name's Jeff Talarico and I am your host. Today, we have Art Ally the founder and president of the multi-billion-dollar Timothy Plan, the nation's leading biblically based, pro-life, pro-family investment company. In 1990, prior to serving as general partner with Timothy Partners, he founded and served as president of Covenant Financial Management. Having formerly been certified as both a financial planner and public accountant,
Art has over 50 years of experience in the investment industry. Prior to forming CFM, he spent eight years with Shearson Lehman Brothers as vice president and branch manager and financial consultant, and five years with Prudential Bache in the same capacity. And it's not just the financial services arena that Art is extremely passionate about. He loves identifying and equipping willing pastors with a rock-solid biblical worldview foundation.
he soul of America. And since:Since he is the founding father of this movement that we're in, I thought it only fitting to have him as our guest. So Art, welcome to the show.
Art (:Thank you.
Art (:Man, anything I can say after that will only mess it up. So thanks, Jeff. Glad to be with you and honored to be your first guest.
Jeff Talarico (:Yeah, I think it's extremely important. I had, I told your son-in-law, Brian, when I had this vision to do this, that you had to be my number one guy. So I got it arranged, finally got convicted for putting it off for a year, but here we are investing with integrity. I want to teach the world as much as we can about this faith-based investing with biblically responsible investing. So you're the man, Art. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself other than what I've already spoken.
Art (:Well, you know, you pretty much said it all of where my passions are because you hit the boot camp, the pastor boot camps, as well as biblically responsible investing. You know, I am heartsick like we all are what's going on in America. And I believe the responsibility for that lies at the doorstep of the church, Jeff. And it's because pastors either are too busy
following their career or they're not equipped to deal with this culture. So we're gonna talk about both I guess today. How much time do we have?
Jeff Talarico (:That's up to you. 30, 45 minutes, 2 hours, I don't care. I'll edit it out anyway.
Art (:Two hours, seven hours, we can cover a lot of stuff, man. Anyway, about me, I think you kind of addressed it a little bit, I've been doing this for right at 50 years now in the investment arena. And 30 years ago, I got really convicted, you know, because I'm also doing other stuff. I mean, I'm heart sick over abortion and pornography and the damage it's doing to our culture.
And I became increasingly aware of the fact that, you know, here I am helping people invest money that God's provided for them. Solid Christians, you know, and we did a pretty good job on investing for financial returns. But I really got convicted. I'm helping them own shares of companies that are trying to destroy us. So that caused the...
about a two-year adventure of trying to find somebody in the financial services industry That really paid attention to those issues There were a couple that would screen out alcohol and tobacco and try to appeal to the Christian community But nobody touched the issues at that time and this is 30 years ago of abortion That was a lightning rod pornography is
absolutely connected with it, addictive behavior, anything anti-family, anti-life activity is something we did not want to have our investors' money actually invested in. And it shouldn't be, Jeff. I mean, you know, take like Coca-Cola. They make a great soft drink.
The question is why are they involved in this culture war? And always when they're involved in it, it's on the wrong side. You know, we're not gonna ask Coca-Cola executives to go down to the river and get baptized, although I'd love to do that. So why are they funding an evil agenda? And that I still don't have an answer for, but I do have an answer. If they're doing it, we will not own the stock of those companies.
Jeff Talarico (:Absolutely.
Art (:for the benefit of our shareholders. So that is the foundation of Timothy and that's where we drew a line in the sand and we have not buried for that.
Jeff Talarico (:So.
Jeff Talarico (:So that brings up a really good point. When you did this, how much pushback did you experience in the industry?
Art (:Well, not actually pushback, but my friends on Wall Street, because I'd been in the business, I'd been around almost 20 years at that time. And, you know, I knew a lot of them. And they said, Ally you are nuts. What do you mean I'm nuts? They said, you cannot screen out the largest, most profitable companies in the investment industry and expect to get good investment returns.
Well, Jeff, my response to them then 30 years ago hasn't changed. It's the same today. If you are a Bible-believing Christian, if you are, that's a big word, if, uh, obedience trumps performance every single time. Now, does that mean we're not going to get good performance? Absolutely not, Jeff. I mean, we take pains to find the best in class.
money management firms to manage all of our funds. We don't manage them here. If we did, I couldn't invest in them myself because I tried that, I'm not that good at it. But we have top tier money management firms managing the different asset classes and they're doing a darn good job. We don't tell them what to invest in, but we do tell them what they cannot invest in for Timothy.
Companies that are failing our basic moral biblical screens and you know we've proven over nearly 30 years now Jeff you don't have to sacrifice investment performance to honor your biblical principles you know there are times when maybe
Jeff Talarico (:So that brings up.
Jeff Talarico (:go ahead and finish your statement. I was going to say that brings up a really
Art (:Go ahead. I was gonna say, you know, all I was gonna say, Jeff, is there a time that we might trail some of the companies and you know, our competition in these asset spaces are generally other mutual funds who follow the appropriate index. You know, we have a best fit index for all of our funds that compare our performance.
Jeff Talarico (:It's okay.
Art (:And when they track that index and these indexes are dominated by humongous companies, the S&P 500, you think there's 500 equal companies and I didn't know there are. There are 500 companies, but a handful of companies dominate and make up about 40% of that index. So what though, and they all fail.
Jeff Talarico (:Well, that's like people thinking.
It's like people thinking about the Dow Jones. I mean, the Dow has 30 stocks in it, and everyone lives and breathes by what the Dow does on a daily basis, which is absolutely ludicrous in my opinion. So you made some really good points. And the tagline that I've chosen for this podcast is wisdom over worth, principles over profit, morals over money, and integrity over it all. How does that resonate and fill?
Art (:Right, right. Yes it is, yes it is.
Jeff Talarico (:the gaps of this biblically responsible investing world.
Art (:Oh man, that's perfect. Send that to me, I think we're gonna put that in with some of our material, because that's exactly describes who we are, what we do and why we do it. And there's nothing wrong with getting good investment returns. We work very hard to do that, but we're not gonna sacrifice integrity to do that. And the example, Jeff, that I use when we first launched Timothy is if you are...
Again, that's a big word if you are a Bible believing Christian How much money do you want to invest it in abortion? No matter how profitable it is how much and The answer should be what zero? That's what we that's what we bring to the table. We will not own companies that are for lack of a better term pursuing an unholy agenda
Jeff Talarico (:Big Bird S.
Jeff Talarico (:Zero.
Jeff Talarico (:So let me ask you this then, with Timothy Plan being the first in the industry that really truly lives up to this, we've had a lot of other companies come up since then that claim to do this, but we both know that being in the industry that they really aren't. So and I'm not asking to pass judgment, that's not what we're here to do, but isn't that cause a lot of confusion to the Christian world?
One company says that, you know, we are owned by XYZ denomination and this is what we do, yet they really don't.
Art (:Well, unfortunately, there's a lot of truth to that, Jeff, but I'm encouraged by the fact that there are some that are doing a pretty darn good job. I mean, this is a huge problem. Timothy cannot reach everybody. I wish we could. So I welcome them. The ones that I get concerned with are the ones that I call wearing a fish on their shirt sleeves.
Jeff Talarico (:Absolutely.
Art (:in order to try to make some kind of profit or appeal to people who don't look deeply enough into what are they really doing. But there are some good ones, I'm glad there are, I wish there were more, and I wish they were all real. A number of them are, but there's a couple that are not.
Jeff Talarico (:Right, and that's as an advisor as well, that's part of my screening process is we can go to all these conventions and meet all these people, yet when you really do a deep dive, they're really not doing anything. And my obligation to my clients is always, if I'm saying this is what I do, I have to do that. That is where the integrity lies in all that we do.
Art (:Thank you.
Art (:Right.
Jeff Talarico (:So I'm glad you pointed that out Art, I appreciate that. Let's change gears a minute and let's talk about some of these associations that we're both involved with. Ron Blue did a great thing with Kingdom Advisors. That's a really great one that we're both part of. But I wanna focus on the one we just had a convention on, the National Association of Christian Financial Consultants. It's a little more intimate, a little greater of a mix of people that...
Art (:Yeah.
Art (:Right.
Jeff Talarico (:truly focus on doing God's work in their business more so than how to do the business. So then you were a key you were a key partner in starting that. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about it.
Art (:Well, you know, when we started Timothy, it occurred to me that there are Christian financial advisors all over this industry. They just don't know who each other are. And you know, we thought it'd be a really good idea, just a couple of us, to actually create a national association of Christian financial consultants so we could gather once a year, share our experiences.
try to edify each other. And for the greatest benefit is know who each other are so you can exchange ideas. Because you know, it gets a little lonely out there if you think you're the only one. And because of that, we know we're not. Some of them are much more serious than others. But at least it's a group of people who really understand, you know.
I'm right on the front lines of this war, as you mentioned in the beginning, for the soul of America. It all, all revolves around money. Money is more central to everybody's life, whether you're a Bible-believing Christian or not. Money is central. You're either...
trying to work to earn it, you're trying to pay bills with it, you're trying to get out of debt with it, you're trying to educate your kids with it, you're trying to provide retirement. Money is the main focus of almost everybody. And the problem I saw early on, because early on people really did not beat a path to Timothy. And me and the Lord talked every day back and forth from home to the office, and said, what's going on? Why don't they know?
And he doesn't give me a clear voice, Jeff, but it hit me. They don't know. And when you step back from that and think about it, all of our training, all, for almost everybody, on handling money comes from the world, not the church and not the Bible.
Art (:The Bible says more about that subject than any other by far, because I guess the Lord knew where we'd get in trouble. So if you continue to handle money the world's way, you're going to end up in a mess. If you handle it God's way, that only works, Jeff, every time. So I really did. I got so convicted, I hibernated for three months.
and I don't like to write. I don't like to do any of that kind of stuff, but God convicted me and I actually hibernated and I didn't rent a condo down in the islands for inspiration. I did this in my bedroom at home and people would leave me alone unless they needed me for something. And I really did in three months put together an incredible biblical stewardship study course.
that covers everything on handling money from cradle to grave. And then I got the education of my life because I started training financial advisors on this course. We'd bring them in, you know, 30, 40, 50 at a time. It's a nine-hour course. We'd bring them in for two days and pour it into them to equip them to go home to their city and teach the people in their city.
God's way of handling money. And they all got excited, Jeff. They got really excited. So they went home and they started knocking on the church doors and found out the church doors stayed closed. And after a while, they kind of got discouraged. But you know, and you can kind of understand because everybody is trying to...
Jeff Talarico (:Ha.
Art (:use a church for their benefit and these pastors. They don't know any more than the congregation does on handling money, because they've never been trained. So it didn't quite explode as I hoped it would to have an impact on the body of Christ. So we ended up putting it up on our website, timothyplan.com. It's there for free.
It is a nine-hour course. It is a resource for anybody who wants to take it. We don't charge anything for it. It's our gift to the Christian body of Christ. But it has everything, not everything, but most of the things God has to say about handling money from foundational to debt to investing, and that's what we do, to giving.
You notice that's number four because in a church, you know, stewardship, they have the obligatory stewardship Sunday and everybody doesn't show up that Sunday because they don't have the principles behind it yet. And then estate planning is a separate module and I don't know any Christian doing estate planning biblically. We do it the way the world has taught us to do it.
Jeff Talarico (:Absolutely.
Art (:And then the final module is stewardship of the culture, which we have a big responsibility for. It is nine hours. You can start it. You can stop it. Pick it back up a week later and it'll be right where you stop. But everybody listening to that podcast, this podcast, owes themself the right and obligation.
to find out what God's word says about handling money and compare that with what you're doing because including me, I've been trained handling money the world's way. And that's...
Jeff Talarico (:Yeah, the world art has forever the saying that money is the root of all evil. That's what they say when that is not what the Bible says. The Bible said it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. You hit the nail on the head. Money is a tool, it's a tool that we are used, that they used in ancient times, that we use today to live, to buy the things that we need.
Art (:Yeah.
Jeff Talarico (:And since we're no longer under the barter system, it is something that we have to use. But the world view of money is what has caused 99.999% of our problems. It's a word called greed. And with greed and the love of this of mammon, it has just devastated our world. And we can see it in our children today, and we can see it in
Art (:Yeah.
Jeff Talarico (:and I don't want to take this political, but we can see it in the lobbyists all over our states and all over our nation's capital. And because of that, what you've started 30 some years ago, and now more and more people, more and more believers in our industry are grasping this and following biblically responsible principles with our money and teaching it.
Art (:Oh, true.
Jeff Talarico (:It's just a wonderful thing. And if it's okay with you, I'll put that link to this study on the show notes of this, as well as any of the podcast information. So people can go out and try to do that on their own if they'd like to.
Art (:Absolutely, and it's right on our homepage. You know, you may have to scroll down a little bit, but boy, I challenge every listener and viewer, take the course. And you mentioned something that's a big part of my concern and heart, is the children. You know, well-meaning parents can raise their children the best they can, but if they don't teach them how to handle money,
Biblically, odds are those kids are going to go off the rails when they leave home and go to college and get their indoctrination there. But if you handle money biblically, it really does set you free. It's a liberating thing. If you handle it the way the world does, you're going to be in bondage. And Satan loves that. And you mentioned greed. And in the Course, I give an example. And it's a question.
Jeff, let me ask it to you. Do you know anybody that doesn't want to make more money? Anybody? No, I mean, there may be one or two people out there, but basically everybody wants, because they think that will lead to happiness. When they make more money, Jeff, what do they want?
Jeff Talarico (:No.
Jeff Talarico (:more. They're never happy. They want more.
Art (:More. When they make that, what do they want? More. It never ends. And God's word is very clear. I want you to be content with what you have. If more money was the answer to everybody's happiness, why are the majority of the wealthiest people in the world among the most miserable? Money is not the answer. Your relationship with the Lord is.
handling it his way, it works every time.
Jeff Talarico (:the only thing.
Jeff Talarico (:So where do you see this industry going in the next five to 10 years with this big push? Because it's not just BRI, as we're calling it today. You've got the faith movement with the faith-driven entrepreneur or the faith-driven investor, all these different movements that I think are doing a good job explaining what money truly is. So is that a big help to this?
Art (:Thank you.
Art (:Sure.
Art (:Well, you know, faith can mean anything, because you've got faith in something. And atheists have faith in nothing, which takes more faith than faith in God. I mean, you know, I don't understand how they think. But, you know, the real pressure, and it's always about the money, Jeff. And you mentioned political people, too many of them are bought and paid for by money and big money.
And big money does not come from our side of the fence, unfortunately. It comes from the evil pursuers because their money and they have a lot of it has strings attached. So when they contribute this money, you know, to these political people, uh, they're bought and paid for. Uh, so, you know, money is a problem, but the other side.
uses money, they weaponize money to a degree we haven't even thought about doing. You know, all we do, we don't weaponize it. But if you take your money away from people that are pursuing an unholy agenda, it is going to have a little impact. But the other side of that probably every listener has become more and more familiar with is the ESG pressure.
And it's, you know, the other side is, I mean, very adept at wordsmithing. I mean, they can make words sound, bad words sound good. And they've done a great job on that. ESG, environmental, what's wrong with that? I mean, but it's an agenda that they're pushing. Social, what's wrong with that? I mean, we think social, but it's an agenda they're pushing. And government.
Governments, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's the agenda they're pushing. And it all, you know, somehow it all got summarized into the word woke. Now, when I was growing up, woke is something you did when you got out of bed, you know, you woke up. But woke means something very different today. And people are finally waking up to the fact that
Jeff Talarico (:Yep.
Art (:There are humongous, you mentioned we've got a couple of billion dollars in assets, which we're thankful to God for, but I mean you contrast us with like a Black Rock, and I don't use names flippantly, but Black Rock is evil to the core and they are pursuing an evil agenda. They are a financial concern, a humongous financial concern, and the guy that runs Black Rock is probably more dangerous.
than George Soros. Everybody says Soros is funding it. Well, this guy's got more money than him. They're managing over $10 trillion, trillion dollars and force, which means what? They own major shares of major corporations and they're imposing their ESG demands on these corporations.
So these corporations that have access, maybe I'm getting in the weeds a little bit here, Jeff, but it's important people understand this. To have access to capital, what matters is their ESG score. And to get a good ESG score is normally not good for profitability of the business. When I started in the business, and you too probably, Jeff, what was important
was to find companies that operated profitably for the benefit of their shareholders. And if they're profitable and well-run, you're going to do okay investing in those companies. Well, today with all that pressure from the ESG crowd, profitability has taken a backseat to being politically correct woke wise. And BlackRock is at the forefront of this.
Anybody invested in BlackRock, I would highly recommend get out of them. Some states are waking up with their pension plans and all of what's going on there. And they're divesting of BlackRock. But when you have $10 trillion, you've got clout that you can use if you want to, and they want to. And it's a sad state of affairs. I went into a little bit.
Jeff Talarico (:So you brought up a really good point. There's nothing wrong with the weeds. We like the weeds. It's OK. But you brought up a good point about divesting from something that we find or know doesn't align with our values. So shareholder activism, what's your thoughts on that?
Art (:Okay.
Art (:Well, shareholder activism has been dominated by the other guys, the wrong side. We have a few people that'll stand up and attend shareholder meetings, but, you know, they're just ignored pretty much. We, in the early days, I mean, we would communicate with companies saying, you know what? Our shareholders, we had a letter people could send to the company saying, you know what?
I'm not going to end up owning shares of this company because of what you do. And some of the companies actually change their behavior, but we've been so outspent and out pressured by, and we don't put pressure on anybody. We just let them know, here's why we're not going to invest in you. But when you've got a BlackRock and a Vanguard and a State Street with 90% of the capital in the industry using their clout.
The reverse has just happened. But people are waking up. You know, an example of the fact, Satan always goes too far, Jeff. You know that. People are waking up finally, and I'm encouraged by what's happened recently. Look at Target. You know, Target was a fine retailer, but when they started incorporating
LGBTQ++ plus and sex change and transgender and Satanism and all of that. Their audience, their market, mom and dad and families, stopped shopping at Target and it hit them in the pocketbook and it got their attention. Anheuser-Busch, you know, with Bud Light, they, we wouldn't know them anyway because of the alcohol, but they offended their
Jeff Talarico (:We did.
Art (:bulk of their audience, these guys driving trucks and all that drinking Bud Light, they don't wanna be involved in the transgender and the LGBTQ and the stuff they were shoving at them. And it hurt them in the pocketbook. Cracker Barrel, for goodness sake, celebrated June as Gay Pride Week with the rainbow-colored rocking chairs.
that hit them in the pocketbook. If people of faith would just pay a little more attention and we've got tools to help you because you wouldn't know what some of these companies are doing, but pay a little more attention and stop frequenting their stores, which enable them to continue to pursue their agenda, things could change overnight because there was a statistic a couple years ago, Jeff.
that of the humongous mutual fund industry, 65% of the money invested in the mutual funds was invested by people who claim to be Bible-believing Christians. What if we would act like that? What if we would divest of these companies that are pursuing an unholy agenda? We would get their attention, and America would change overnight.
Jeff Talarico (:I believe that.
Art (:So it's really all up to us. All we do at Timothy is we provide the platform for people who really want to try to honor God with the way they're investing the money he's entrusted to them. And our commitment, I mean, we could have compromised over these 30 years, but that's not what God called us to do. And we're not gonna do it. If it hurts some of our, we just won't do it because, you know,
Jeff Talarico (:I'm sure glad you listened.
Art (:I fear God, I do not fear man. And I wish all of us would get serious about that.
Jeff Talarico (:Amen.
Jeff Talarico (:So one thing I share with my clients a lot, you kind of talked about that a second ago, is if publicly traded companies would just not be involved one way or the other with any of the things that cause controversy, I think it would change the dynamics of an investment. They just need to quit using.
Art (:Oh, it would, and it would be to the benefit of the investor.
Jeff Talarico (:Absolutely, I totally agree with that. And that's what we've been trying to push for years, just don't do it. You know, Nike's slogan is just do it. We're saying just don't. Just don't take a stand to hit a sect of society that is so minuscule, you're causing, the people that really wanna own you.
Art (:Yeah.
Jeff Talarico (:you're causing them to leave, to divest, like you said a minute ago. And that's just wrong. Some of these good companies, I mean, Target has been good for years. Cracker Barrel, like you said, I mean, things like that, that just, there's no need to do it. Just be who you are.
Art (:If you're making caterpillar tractors, make your tractors. Don't get involved in the culture war. But if you do, know this, Timothy will not own your stock for any of our shareholders. You know, we're not the Black Rock or any of that, but we are who we are. And you know, God has never wanted, needed, or used a majority, Jeff, ever to accomplish his will. He just wants some faithful people.
Our message is we'd sure like to see more faithful people. Not that you're not faithful, but you know, your fruit really speaks to who you are. And all we do is provide an alternative. And you know, we've got tools for people and you have Evaluator Jeff. You can tell people.
what companies are invested in, because they don't pay attention. That's why they go to guys like you. They expect you to help guide them on how to invest the money, but they are now starting to ask the question, where is this money invested? And unless they do the kind of research, we've got six full-time people that do nothing but dig into what these companies are doing beneath the radar, they can come to you and find out.
You know, how much money that they've been investing are in companies that are involved in abortion or pornography or pushing the LGBTQ or non-traditional married life or anti-family entertainment or any addictive activity, which is anti-family. They can find that out if they just come to you and you'll do it for free, you'll show them. Not that I'm offering your service for free, but I am, man, you can do that.
Jeff Talarico (:Absolutely, absolutely.
Jeff Talarico (:All right, I'll tell you, it has been a pleasure having you on today. Let's finish it off with one thing. What do you want the people to really get from understanding who you are, who Timothy Plan is, and what this movement really means, not only for America, but for the world?
Art (:Well, thanks, Jeff. You know, I'm just a dumb guy from the west side of Cleveland. Grew up there. I am proof that God can use the most unlikely people to accomplish what he wanted to do in this arena. So I'm nobody. But Timothy is there for people who really want to get serious about serving the Lord we claim to serve because.
The question I ask on all of my training sessions is who owns it all? Who owns it all and everybody in that crowd would say well God owns it all and I'd have to say well You're all lying because when I look at what you're doing with it, you're not acting like God owns it All we do is provide a lane for you to come
and know that your money will be well managed. We've got outstanding money managers, but more than that, we will not violate your basic biblical foundational principles and end up owning companies that are really trying to destroy us. That's a difference Timothy, I think, brings to the table.
Jeff Talarico (:All right, Art, thank you again for your time today. This has been Art Ally with Timothy Partners on Investing with Integrity podcast. We'd like to welcome you all back again in a few weeks for another episode and understanding more about your money and keeping integrity over it all. Art, thanks again, bye bye.
Art (:Thank you, Jeff. God bless.
