The Future Investment Quality rating (Future IQ or FIQ) is intended to serve as the consumer-side equivalent of the credit rating system banks use to judge whether a person should have access to financial services, and at what cost.

Banks, investment managers, securities, and commodities, are already rated for credit-worthiness by ratings agencies, but this is a system that primarily serves lenders and investors. That system has also failed, in the past, to detect critical systemic weaknesses and false claims of asset holdings that have led to some of the worst financial crises in history.

Future IQ

The Future IQ system aims to level the playing field between major financial institutions and consumers, so consumers have a way to reveal to a global monitoring and rating system that banks, investors, or industrial-scale actors, are engaging in practices that call into question whether they are committed to good-faith dealing with clients and investors, and their right to fair and livable future conditions, and so whether they are trustworthy or may pose an undue risk to be avoided.

First of all, rated financial institutions will be judged on the degree to which they offer consumer-friendly services. For example:

  • Fixed rate credit and lending, at affordable rates;
  • Low-cost, transparent credit, where compound interest can be avoided;
  • Interest rates commensurate with income, rather than rates that punish people who earn less;
  • Banking services that support more robust local economies, affordably and inclusively;
  • Adjustable payment schedules, to ensure consumers can navigate economic difficulty without suffering years of punishment from the credit-reporting system;
  • Same-day updates to credit reports, any time an account is brought current;
  • Savings accounts with interest rates above the rate of inflation.

Those that score well on these and similar consumer-friendly practices, will receive the highest scores. Those that perform badly on these measures will receive lower scores.

Future IQ ratings will have other layers of multidimensional value-tracking, including Resilience Value, Fiscal Pressure, and Consumer Experience, which are detailed below.

Resilience Value

A second tier of rating will add further detail by examining macrocrotical resilience value (RV), to support emacrocritical assessment of the personal and institutional risks inherent in doing business with a particular banking institution.

‘Macrocritical’ refers to the degree to which a given practice or outcome supports or undermines the health and resilience of the overall economy. This means the impacts on health and resilience of small businesses, local economies, physimacrocriticalcture, including homes, roads, and local services and activities, are all part of the Resilience Value equation.

RV also encompasses affordability and sustainability of food systems, including health impacts on people of all levels of income. And, it includes climate-specific risks, impacts, costs, and resilience msasures.

Over time, RV ratings will also be built into the primary Future IQ rating, while also allowing for the disaggregation of specific macrocritical resilience indicators, which can benefit rated institutions in identifying ways to improve their overall performance.

Fiscal Pressure

Building on the RV rating, Future IQ will also assess the potential impact on public budgets and fiscal stability, based on known effects (and hidden costs) of anti-consumer, high-cost, exclusionary, and market-rigging financial practices.

This fiscal pressure (FP) measure will rely on open source intelligence gathering, public domain data, proprietary analytical tools, and contextual insights relevant to specific jurisdictions. It will aim to determine whether certain financialization practices undermine the fiscal health of local, state, and national government institutions, and whether they undermine the ability of local economies to sustain improved economic performance (and by extension, healthier revenues) through everyday activity.

In 2020, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that unchecked climate change would destabilize the financial system and undermine its ability to support the mainstream economy. In 2021, the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council issued a similar finding. Agencies working under both Pres. Trump (2020) and Pres. Biden (2021) issued those findings, because the evidence is clear and the math is straightforward. The systemic risks posed by unchecked climate disruption, and related ripple effects, including potential collapse of the human food supply, pose direct and existential threats to mainstream financial institutions.

That financial and macroeconomic risk creates undeniable fiscal stability risk to nation states—including the United States, which has the largest financial sector in the world. As integration of data systems and fine-tuned cross-referencing and science data translation advance, Resilience Value will make it easier to pinpoint Fiscal Resilience risks, and to disaggregate which activities create the greatest overall additional burden.

Over time, as this OSINT-driven rating system becomes more trusted, mainstream, and reliable, it will be integrated into the primary Future IQ rating, so consumers, investors, and public agencies will have better insight from a single multidimensional metric.

Consumer Experience

The Future IQ rating system will also take inputs directly from consumers, vulnerable and affected communities, and other stakeholders, to develop an evidence-based background of information on the business practices and good faith standards at work in rated institutions.

  • Consumers wishing to act as witnesses will present the details of their experience, with as much documentation as they wish to share.
  • Future IQ teams will review evidence and follow up with investigations aimed at determining whether the bank has a valid explanation for such consumer experiences or whether their internal systems are oriented toward creating the appearance of compliance while not treating the consumer’s best interest as a priority.

Randomized surveys of consumers will also supplement this process of direct testimony and follow up investigation, to provide a wider range of insights and to produce a more informed consumer experience (CE) rating.

Due to the subjective nature of this information, it may take longer to fully integrate the CE rating into the primary Future IQ number, but the system will be built from the beginning to work toward that eventual integration.

Vision for a better financial system and everyday economy

It is no secret that major banks and financial institutions have, historically, favored wealthy clients over everyday depositors, or that they have contributed significantly to the destructive financial crises that have affected open economies over several centuries.

What is less well understood in the mainstream debate about banking and financial policy is that financial institutions perform better and create more stable landscapes of widespread economic opportunity when they are well regulated, strategically incentivized, and actively rewarded for constructive, inclusive, good faith behavior. The Future IQ rating system is designed to provide policy-makers, regulators, investors, consumers, and the rated institutions themselves, with more reliable information about how to build a reliably productive business model attuned to future value-building opportunities.

In the age of deep climate disruption, it is increasingly important for institutions that provide financial support in the public, private, multilateral, and philanthropic sectors, to consider Earth systems health and resilience and indicators of socio-economic inclusion, fairness, and sustainability.

A key goal of the Future IQ rating system will be to ensure all decision-makers, across institutions large and small, have actionable insights into the most value-building strategies for future investment and integral human development.