ESG Investor’s weekly round-up of news on technology and tools in the sustainable investing sector, including Arabesque, GoldenSource, LPA, Evercity, Morningstar and Insig AI.
Data providers Arabesque and GoldenSource have announced a new partnership which will give investors to access Arabesque S-Ray’s ESG data products and insights hosted on AWS Data Exchange, through GoldenSource ESG Impact. Arabesque collates more than four million ESG data points daily from over 30,000 sources for performance measurements on sustainability and has recently launched a new Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) Data Solution. The latter is a toolkit developed for asset managers to collate the data they need to comply with SFDR reporting requirements. GoldenSource’s ESG Impact product also gives ESG data coverage, including future structured and unstructured ESG content from new data sources. “Taking action with ESG data has become an essential capability for financial firms, yet for most practitioners, it’s a newly established discipline that’s evolving rapidly,” said John Eley, GoldenSource CEO. “As such, having Arabesque’s ESG data sets, created by practitioners for practitioners, via a connection into our solution for taking action on ESG data, brings the capability to keep up as things evolve.”
Capital markets technology and advisory firm LPA has partnered with Evercity to enhance its ESG consulting services. Evercity is a digital platform for impact measurement and investment which was launched at the UN Global Climate Innovation Lab during COP26 earlier this month. LPA monitors amendments made to the EU Action Plan, helping financial institutions keep up to date on regulatory changes, implementing new requirements and tracking progress against ESG goals. Evercity uses a blockchain-based platform to streamline the end-to-end issuance of green and sustainability-linked bonds. Evercity also works with banks, impact funds and companies assess their degree of alignment with the EU’s taxonomy. “As pressure for sustainability rises, financial institutions are recognising the need to move towards a low-carbon economy and have started to adjust their business models to fully embrace ESG requirements. Together with Evercity, we are confident we can provide financial institutions with the tools necessary to achieve their goals,” said Hans-Joachim Lefeld, Partner on ESG Consulting at LPA.
Morningstar has expanded the coverage of Morningstar sustainability ratings by embedding country risk ratings and ESG risk ratings provided by subsidiary Sustainalytics. Both sets of ratings are based on similar principles but measure distinct forms of ESG risk. The former measures risks across national wealth, including natural and human capital, whereas the latter measures risks to enterprise value. Morningstar now offers sustainability ratings for more than 85,000 funds globally, including 25,000 multi-asset and fixed-income funds spanning corporate investments and investments in countries, such as sovereign debt. “Investors with a fixed income focus are increasingly looking at how ESG risks may affect their funds and underlying holdings,” said Will Ridout, Senior Manager of Product Strategy and Development at Sustainalytics. “Investors can now assess the ESG risks of their sovereign exposure and integrate these considerations into their fund selection criteria.
Insig AI, a data science and machine-learning company working with asset managers, has entered into a conditional share purchase agreement to acquire the entire issued share capital of FDB Systems. It specialises in the collection of financial market data for investors. “Combining FDB Systems’ technology with Insig AI’s machine-learning and analysis tools creates an aggregator of ESG information,” said Steven Cracknell, Insig AI CEO. “Using natural language processing classifiers, it will help fund managers interrogate the vast volume of available ESG data, which is normally difficult to access with any transparency.”
