ESG Investor’s weekly round-up of news on technology and tools in the sustainable investing sector, including Dow Jones, Arabesque, Snowflake, Qontigo, Util, ESGdatapoint and RightShip.
News and business information provider Dow Jones has launched a sustainability data service which offers asset managers insights into companies’ ESG practices to help them service purpose-driven investors. The new data set provides sustainability scores and sentiment on more than 6,000 publicly traded companies. The scoring model is aligned with Sustainability Accounting Standards Board standards, which covering five sustainability dimensions and 26 categories. Using a methodology which combines company-disclosed data with thousands of global new sources, the daily news sentiment and scoring updates provides users with “more timely and transparent” information than self-reported data alone, according to Dow Jones. “Financial professionals are looking for a comprehensive view of companies’ ESG practices; however, what they currently find are opaque data sources, lacking in detail and up-to-date information. Our innovative model supplements company self-reporting with news data to provide trusted, timely ESG sentiment and scores that can help portfolio managers optimize strategy and design products for the future of investing,” said Joe Cappitelli, general manager of Dow Jones Newswires. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial team led the creation of the sustainability scoring methodology. The data model was co-developed with ESG data and technology provider Arabesque S-Ray. Dow Jones’s sustainability data will initially be available via a feed, designed for institutional investors to integrate into portfolio management and strategy systems.
A new partnership between ESG data and technology firm Arabesque and data cloud provider Snowflake will enable financial institutions and investors to integrate Arabesque’s suite of data assets and insights into their technology stacks securely and in real-time. The partnership will allow Arabesque to deliver its solutions at scale through Snowflake’s Data Cloud, which offers a centralised and streamlined data delivery experience with no additional integration or extract transform load required. Clients will be able to use the Snowflake platform to access Arabesque’s sustainability metrics and raw data on corporate greenhouse gas emissions and green revenues, together with its proprietary regulatory solutions including the SFDR Data Solution and TCFD Alignment Barometer. “Through this new partnership with Snowflake, we are able to offer live data assets to our clients with near-instant updates, delivering best-in-class data and insights at both speed and scale,” said Daniel Klier, President of Arabesque.
Qontigo, a provider of risk, analytics and index solutions has made available ISS ESG, Clarity AI and Sustainalytics data within its Axioma Portfolio Optimizer. Sustainalytics will also be integrated into Axioma Portfolio Analytics for performance attribution and reporting as well as Axioma Risk Model Machine, which allows users to create custom risk models. Qontigo said the direct integration of the sustainability data services into Axioma portfolio construction tools would help investors to construct portfolios actively tilting towards a combination of ESG attributes, identify point-in-time ESG exposures, create desired hedges, develop custom risk models that explain risk and return, and run performance attribution based on ESG attributes. “Clients running strategies with ESG-linked goals – from climate to impact – may already be working with a number of vendors, but they can now benefit from more seamless data integration with leading analytics tools for portfolio construction, risk and reporting, which could result in lower total cost of ownership,” said Chris Sturhahn, Chief Product Officer for Analytics at Qontigo.
London-based sustainable investment data firm Util has released an analytics portal which provides information on the social and environmental impact of almost 50,000 listed companies, as measured against the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Users will get two weeks of free access in which to explore and compare company impacts, screen firms against SDG criteria and generate tailored portfolio reports. Util applies machine learning to a wide range of peer-reviewed texts to identify relationships between product and services and the 17 SDGs and their 169 sub-targets. Results are aggregated to a revenue- and geographically-adjusted company level to reveal how nearly 50,000 global companies – and the capital tracking them – both negatively and positively contribute to social and environmental outcomes.
A new UK-based ESG data provider, ESGdatapoint, has launched with the aim of enabling investors and businesses to access and leverage decision-ready ESG metric information. Initially, the firm’s product suite consists of fully customisable ESG reporting datasets, a net zero commitments dataset and global corporate ESG disclosures data portal ESGdatapoint aims to distinguish itself through its comprehensive coverage of companies reporting ESG metrics, irrespective of sustainability framework, financial sector, capitalisation or location. Using custom, in-house machine-learning and artificial intelligence solutions, ESGdatapoint produces standard and bespoke ESG reporting datasets for clients, and also provides the ability for company-to-company ESG performance comparison. “There is huge problem obtaining, validating, and comparing ESG metrics across the full coverage of investee companies. Our focus is sourcing, extracting, validating, mapping, aggregating, and distributing ‘ESG metrics and material subjects’ information datasets to help make ESG performance measurement easier for investors,” said Founder and CEO Jay Gandhi.
RightShip, a third-party risk assessment and due diligence firm serving the ship-borne commodities industries, has launched an expanded and enhanced toolset for monitoring, measuring, and benchmarking shipping-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The firm’s Carbon Accounting Reporting Tool builds on existing expertise, supplied to charterers and freight forwarders for the last five years, by providing companies with a bespoke reporting tool that measures, monitors and benchmarks GHG emissions over defined periods. The tool responds to the increasing pressure faced by bulk commodity producers, freight forwarders, traders and investors to demonstrate reductions in their Scope 3 emissions, including from shipping. For industries reliant on ocean-trade, RightShip’s enhanced reporting capabilities are designed to help firms to identify carbon outputs and key emissions hotspots and establish attainable paths to emissions reduction.
