Seven Pillars states its financial ethics services, primarily education-oriented, are geared towards the sectors of:
government - working with governmental agencies and departments to incorporate ethical considerations into policy-making and provide ethics seminar and consulting[6]
business - provide employees with ethical perspectives to decision-making and enlighten employers to ethical issues with the institute's industry case studies[7]
academia - contribute to the proliferation of research, articles, and learning tools pertaining to ethics and finance[8]
The institute has embarked on a number of collaborative efforts with other organizations and institutions.
One such collaboration is with the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London where they work on ethics, law, and regulation in finance.[9] The collaboration aim is to foster a dialogue on important ethical policy issues affecting the financial services industry.[9] This dialogue is to be achieved primarily through Dr. Costanza Russo's designing of a postgraduate module in 'Ethics in Business and in Finance', and a comprehensive framework that includes collaboration on research, publications and other educational endeavors.[9] Dr. Tan Bhala also works closely with the Transparency Task Force, an advocacy group based in London, England, whose purpose is to increase transparency in financial services.[10]
In addition to the direct work of the institute, its president and founder, Dr. Tan Bhala, has delivered numerous lectures and speeches around the world on topics related to the synthesis of ethics and finance, promoting the institute's mission and quest.[4] Among some are:
Ethics and Transparency at the Transparency Symposium at Mercer Consulting[18]
Finance and Ethics Panel at the Global Business Ethics Symposium at Bentley University[19]
Publications
The primary publication of the institute is its biannual journal, Moral Cents: The Journal of Ethics in Finance,[20] which is the first journal of its kind to focus on financial ethics and attempts to follow the institute's mission.[21]
The institute also publishes a variety of ancillary resources to aid in its mission, including:
an online library of Financial Ethics Case Studies (FECS) - case studies in financial ethics from around the world, including some regarding Universal Basic Income[23][24]
a collection of introductory articles on ethics under the rubric of "Ethics 101"[25]
Real Clear Markets has featured a number of articles published by the institute and its associates in their research reports:
Financing, Ethics and the 2016 Brazil Olympics[26]
Are Insider Trading and the GM Bailout Ethical?[28]
The institute is also currently in the middle of developing a financial ethics training video series titled, Ethics in Finance is Good!.[29] The series is intended to have twelve episodes, each about two to three minutes long, and each dedicated to a specific topic in financial ethics. The videos are largely in animated form and are an attempt to provide a more light-hearted, entertaining and punchy type of ethics training video as opposed to the supposed corporate run-of-the-mill videos.[29] As of January 2021, there are seven episodes.[30][31]
