www.environmental-finance.

com 1
 19 September, New York | #efbonds

“The original event for GSSS bond

and loan issuers and investors”

Platinum sponsors Gold sponsors Silver sponsors

For more information: www.environmental-finance.com/DEBT-AM24

 Early bird
ends on Friday
9 August 2024
Environmental Finance
subscribers receive
a 30% discount

17 October 2024
Convene, London

Gain insight into the emerging ESG data industry

and understand the key factors shaping its future

NGO/
Governments
Data providers/ 4%
Support services 4%

Investors
Other 8% & Financial
institutions 58%

Corporates/Energy/
Real estate 10% REGISTER
NOW
Regulators/
Standard setters 16%

*2023 audience profile

For more information, please visit

www.environmental-finance.com/SDATA24
The key trends
shaping ESG data
The ESG data landscape is evolving at pace as it pushes into new fields, driven by regulation and
technology. Peter Cripps reports

The ESG data deluge is growing

The amount of ESG information companies are reporting is
growing, driven by demands for information from investors, data
firms and regulators. On top of this, there is an increasing amount
of ‘alternative data’ from sources such as satellite imagery, news
flow and social media sentiment data.
Companies are increasingly complaining about the ever
increasing ‘reporting burden’. For example, Lincoln Financial told
Environmental Finance’s Sustainability Data America conference
that it is now reporting on more than 2,000 ESG data points a year.
Many companies are trying to rationalise the amount of
ESG data they report, and it is therefore becoming increasingly
important to harmonise reporting requirements. Some of the main
standards or framework providers are in discussions about how to
achieve this, and ‘interoperability’ has become one of the key buzz
words in the ESG data landscape. Patricia Torres, Bloomberg
The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) issued
standards in June 2023 that are intended to be a global baseline
for reporting, and has taken in some key frameworks such as with ISSB and is looking for how to do the same for the CSRD.
the TaskForce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and the But more regulations are in the pipeline. The US Securities
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. and Exchange Commission has plans to demand more stringent
It has been working with the EU to harmonise it with the carbon disclosure, although this has stalled due to legal challenges,
Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), although and the UK is coming up with its own disclosure regime. It remains
the CSRD does ask for more information, as it has a focus on to be seen how ‘interoperable’ these will be.
‘double materiality’ – meaning it requires information that is not
only deemed material to the company reporting the data but also The changing shape of the ESG data landscape
the company’s impacts on people and planet. The increasingly aggressive intervention of policymakers and
However, some jurisdictions are not fully implementing the regulators continues to reshape the ESG data landscape. As
ISSB, meaning there could still be disparities in reporting regimes. ESG has gone mainstream, they see the data that underpins it as
Environmental Finance’s ESG Data Asia conference heard calls important enough to warrant prescription and supervision.
for an ‘ISSB Lite’ for the region, as companies there are less well- They are intervening in numerous ways:
resourced to report. • By demanding more disclosure (as mentioned above);
But Bloomberg’s head of sustainable finance solutions, Patricia • By setting up databases as a public good, such as the European
Torres, called for the ISSB to be implemented in full, for it to Single Access Point; and
effectively become the ‘global baseline’ it sets out to be. • By regulating ESG raters, such as in the EU.
Till Jung, head of ISS ESG, says: “You hear a lot about alignment This is having the effect of increasing the amount of disclosure –
of initiatives, such as between ISSB and [standards underpinning the CSRD is covering about five times as many companies as the
the CSRD]. The reality is there are still differences, and when it Non-financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) which it replaces,
comes to navigating all those regional requirements, clients will for example – and of standardising the data that is reported.
need help.” ISS’s Jung fears this may have the effect of turning ESG reporting
Meanwhile, the CDP – formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure into a “box ticking exercise”.
Project – which has long been one of the key parts of the plumbing “Client reporting is coming first, and everything out of scope of
for the ESG data landscape, has brought its framework into line regulations is a nice-to-have,” he argues. “Regulatory compliance

2 www.environmental-finance.com

Till Jung, ISS ESG
is a big driver, for better or worse, it has helped the sector to grow a
lot. But sometimes I feel it doesn’t leave much space for innovation
for us or clients because they are focused on doing what the
regulator says and ticking the boxes.”
ESG data providers are increasingly becoming regulatory
solutions providers, to help companies meet requirements such as
the CSRD.
With data becoming increasingly well reported – and set to
become increasingly available on free-to-use platforms – the role of
ESG data providers is changing from filling in data gaps to assessing
the quality of performance and helping to meet regulations.
Data providers are also evolving the products they offer to meet
the increasingly sophisticated needs of the market.
Sustainalytics, for example, recently updated its flagship
ESG risk ratings, including enhancing its corporate governance
methodology and strengthening three material ESG risk measures.
Are ESG ratings dead?
RepRisk has launched thematic scores to complement its ESG
ratings.
This is part of a broader trend of disaggregating ESG ratings.
Investors have been increasingly looking beyond the rating, and
digging into the underlying data to form their own opinions.
A recent EU regulation of ratings providers asks them to provide
separate scores for each of the three pillars.
Alexandra Mihailescu Cichon, chief commercial officer at
RepRisk, says: “We may be seeing the sun setting on ESG ratings
and the move towards raw and granular data … so organisations
can slice and dice what they need.
“As [ESG data] has gone more mainstream users are ready
to use granular data and they can build their own frameworks,
according to client mandates.
“Will the term ESG retire at some point? Yes.”
But she adds that the demand for sustainability-related data has
a bright future, even if it is not called ESG anymore: “Whatever
3 www.environmental-finance.com
you call it, the direction of travel is one way – there’s more and
more acceptance, it’s definitely mainstream.”
Climate still dominates
“Climate is still the biggest topic – it is constantly evolving
and is superdynamic,” argues ISS’s Jung. “From a regulatory
perspective, it’s the topic most in focus.”
Scope 3 emissions data, from upstream and downstream a
company’s value chain, remains a key issue with plenty of room for
improvement, he adds.
Transition is also a hot topic for which investors want more
information.
“We are investing a lot in our climate offering, with new
datapoints, research and models. Scenario alignment and
everything attached to it is very dynamic. We just launched new
scenario analysis enhancements – we offer 22 scenarios now.
“With the Network on Greening the Financial System working
on a new update on scenarios, that will remain in focus for many,
with regulatory requirements for stress testing and so on.”
Avoided emissions in focus – just don’t call it Scope 4
There is a push for a framework to harmonise reporting of
‘avoided emissions’ – which some observers call ‘Scope 4
emissions’.
The concept focuses on quantifying avoidance of greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions that would otherwise have occurred, for
example, by companies selling semiconductors, waste management
services and industrial and vehicle batteries.
Many financial institutions have developed their own
methodologies for assessing this, but the result is a patchwork of
different approaches.
Doing so is fraught with difficulties, including choosing the
baseline against which to compare assumptions, measurement
and attribution of avoided emissions based on where and how
technologies are used, and whether claims of contribution to
avoided emissions are reported separately to, or deducted from,
‘induced’ emissions from polluting activities.
This makes it all-the-more important to develop a standardised
way of calculating and reporting avoided emissions, according
to Manuel Coeslier, lead expert for climate and environment at
Mirova, one of the founding members of an initiative to devise a
standard for doing so.
However, some warn against using the term Scope 4, warning
that it will discourage people from adopting the concept, seeing
as Scope 3 emissions have proved so troublesome to measure
accurately.
Nature
Biodiversity remains the hottest topic, boosted by the launch
of the recommendations of the Taskforce on Nature-related
Financial Disclosures in September.
ISS’s Jung says that nature is emerging both as its own theme,
like climate, but is also increasingly being integrated with climate.
He says it will make sense for many corporates to report on both
together.
See feature on page 8.
Private markets data
ESG ratings arguably started off in listed equities and are still
being broadened out to cover fixed income, with other asset
classes even further behind.
There is a big push for data on private companies. This was
exemplified by a recent tie-up between MSCI and Moody’s.
The strategic partnership will give Moody’s access to MSCI’s
ESG ratings and content, and give MSCI access to a Moody’s
firmographic database to help boost its coverage of private firms.
Another example is BlackRock’s acquisition of private assets
data specialist Preqin for £2.55 billion. BlackRock will make
Preqin data available on its Aladdin platform.
Meanwhile, work is ongoing to create frameworks to harmonise
reporting for private data.

Location-based data
The demand for increased data on physical climate risks, nature
risks, social risks and Scope 3 emissions, are all being hindered
by the lack of data on companies’ physical assets and the assets of
the companies that supply them.
The need for location data is therefore one of the biggest areas of
demand in the data market.
Perhaps surprisingly, companies tend not to supply this data,
and much of the geospatial data that is emerging is hard to use
without it.
UBP recently blamed a lack of asset-level data for hindering
portfolio-wide assessments of biodiversity impact.
In 2022, the Swiss financial services giant started disclosing a
mapping of its Biodiversity Restoration fund’s exposure to each
region, in recognition that “location is a particularly important
factor when assessing [biodiversity] dependencies and impacts”, it
said in its 2023 Impact Report. But it said data was a key challenge
and said “disclosure has not yet improved to the degree where we
can make portfolio-wide measurements” of biodiversity impact.
The problems of obtaining this data were highlighted by
academic research from four European universities, which warned
that European financial institutions could be underestimating
physical climate risk by up to 70%.
Most approaches used by financial institutions aggregate scores
at a firm-level. But this approach fails to consider that the location
of each asset has major implications for how it could be impacted
by a risk as well as its ability to respond.
An author of the report called for an asset-level risk assessment.
She told Environmental Finance that institutions often lack the
granular data needed. While she recognised it took the academic
team almost three years to collect the right data and carry out the
study of firms listed in Mexico, she said it can be done.
ISS’s Jung says it is being worked on but thinks “we are probably
a couple of years until we get really solid data – it is not a quick task.
Companies are not disclosing it yet. This is still a nut to crack”.
Assurance will lift standards
There is a growing push for sustainability data to receive some
form of assurance.
The EU’s CSRD requires limited assurance, for example, while
Australia, India and the US have indicated they will introduce
mandatory reasonable assurance at some point.
David Madon, director of sustainability, policy and regulatory
affairs at the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), told
Environmental Finance’s Sustainability Data America conference
that assurance will “help the market sort out its data”, by requiring
David Madon, IFAC
it to get its data collection, systems, processes and internal controls
“in line with what you’re doing with financial information”.
However, if sustainability reporting is ever to be on a par with
financial information, “we need to get to reasonable assurance”,
he said. He defined this as where evidence obtained by the auditor
gives them “reasonable confidence” – not absolute confidence –
that the information is not materially misstated. According to his
research, only around 20% of all assurance is ‘reasonable’. The rest
is limited assurance, which is a lower bar, whereby “nothing has
come to the auditor’s attention that makes you suspect that the
information is misleading”.
Brooke Tucker-Reid, global head of sustainability strategy and
reporting at insurer Manulife, says the cost of obtaining assurance
can be an issue.
Manulife currently obtains limited assurance. “Every time we go
through assurance, we learn how to strengthen our processes, we
cover something that we hadn’t thought of before and aim to get
better ... we do aspire to get to reasonable assurance.”
She argued that progressing to ‘reasonable assurance’ “adds a
level of trust” and “lifting the hood” on the data can take reporting
to the next level.
AI – a game changer for ESG data
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to help navigate the
sea of ESG data and find actionable insights.
Budha Bhattacharya, head of systematic research at Lombard
Odier Investment Managers (LOIM), said AI has the potential to
be “a game changer” for ESG data.
Its applications include generating ESG data, resolving some of
the shortcomings of ESG data, and shedding light on parts of the
economy such as emerging markets or private companies.
ESG data providers use AI to help them find insights and
Sustainalytics, for example, is launching an ‘ESGPT’ tool to help
data users to ask questions of the data. 
See features on pages 14 and 23 for more on AI and ESG.

4 www.environmental-finance.com
Delivering actionable insights
and quality data
Till Jung, managing director and head of the ESG business at ISS STOXX, tells Environmental Finance
how the firm supports investors in their decision making in an evolving and increasingly competitive space
Environmental Finance: What
regulatory developments are front of
mind for investors this year?
Till Jung: Several different disclosure
requirements are coming into force around
the world and investors need to understand
what to report on and what data they need.
Aside from the climate-focused
regulations coming into force this year, such
as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority
disclosure requirements and New Zealand’s
disclosure rule, biodiversity-related reporting
requirements under the EU taxonomy will
Till Jung
hit everyone this year. In addition, while it
is a voluntary framework, the Taskforce on
Nature-related Financial Disclosures has already seen over 100
financial institutions register as early adopters. Among them are
many of our clients and we provide a variety of solutions in these
evolving areas.
We also see social issues rising up the agenda. It is not a new
topic but it’s certainly gaining traction – particularly around
modern slavery, labour and human rights as recent regulatory
requirements have enhanced corporate disclosures in Australia,
the UK and Canada, for instance. Our new modern slavery
solution allows clients to upload their portfolio and download a
report which details their risk exposure and also demonstrates
how their holdings are managing modern slavery risks.
With regulatory frameworks such as the Corporate
Sustainability Due Diligence Directive in the EU coming into
force, investors are also increasingly thinking about combined
social and environmental risks as well.
The other topic is cyber security. The US Securities and
Exchange Commission has enhanced its requirements for US-
listed companies to disclose how boards are overseeing cyber
security risks and we expect this topic to continue growing in
importance. We provide a data-driven risk score that allows
investors to understand the risk of a breach event happening in
the next 12 months for their holdings.
EF: How do you help investors differentiate between data
quality over quantity?
TJ: It is important to have a very strong global client service team.
Investors need an expert partner with regional understanding to
help them navigate the complexities throughout their investment
journey. Some of our clients have teams in place to analyse the
data that they are looking at, but some do not have those resources.
We have subject matter experts who can help them interpret the
5 www.environmental-finance.com
data, apply research to their investments
and provide the regional context. For global
clients, we can provide the big picture view
as well.
Investors sometimes say there is not enough
data out there. I think there’s probably more
than enough, but you must find the data
that’s decision-useful and is relevant to you.
And you need efficient ways to consume it.
We provide the flexibility to consume the
data: via a classic feed, an API or via cloud
delivery. We also deliver our offerings via
many third-party platforms. It has become
increasingly important for clients to be able
to have this flexibility in how they access and
integrate the data.
Regulations such as the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure
Regulation and EU Taxonomy requirements have also been
further clarified over the last two or three years. You must adapt
very quickly to make sure that your clients get the data in a form
and shape that is compliant with the latest regulatory clarifications.
EF: What improvements in corporate disclosure and
transparency would you like to see to enhance the quality
of the data that investors need?
TJ: Cyber and biodiversity are more nascent areas where we
believe investors need more data reported by companies to gain
more actionable insights. There is also a lack of comprehensive
information on the asset locations of companies, which is crucial
to allowing investors to accurately and fully evaluate the physical
climate risks, biodiversity impacts, or social risk exposures across
their portfolios. While more progress needs to be made in terms
of transparency, ISS STOXX can help clients by modelling the
full value chain impacts of their investments.
EF: You’ve recently merged with STOXX. How do your
clients benefit from your enhanced offering?
TJ: With a full index capability added to our offerings, we now
provide a comprehensive, integrated set of solutions across
the whole investment lifecycle. We have the data and research
solutions to analyse and report on sustainability risks and impact,
we are providing leading engagement services alongside industry
leading shareholder meeting research and voting solutions to
act based on that data, and now we provide best-in-class index
solutions. Clients can now utilise the same sets of data or research
across different aspects of what they’re trying to achieve.
For more information, see: www.issgovernance.com/esg/
 List of entries

COMPANY PRODUCT COMPANY PRODUCT

4EI Environmental Vulnerability Space-Data-as-a-Service HIP Investor Climate, Impact and ESG Corporate Equity, Fixed Income
and REIT Metrics, & Ratings
Amalthea FS Amalthea FS - Climate and Environment Data
Marketplace HIP Investor Climate, Impact and ESG Fund & ETF Ratings
Bloomberg Bloomberg Sustainable Finance Solutions HIP Investor Climate, Impact and ESG Municipal Bond Data, Metrics,
& Ratings
Carbon Tracker Initiative Oil & Gas Company Assessment of Transition Risk and
Paris Alignment HIP Investor Climate, Impact, ESG & SDG Issuer Benchmarking &
Reporting
Carbon4 Finance BIODIVERSITY IMPACT ANALYTICS POWERED BY THE
GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY SCORE™ (BIA-GBS) for the HIP Investor Fossil Free, Impact and ESG US Retirement Plans,
biodiversity impact and dependencies of companies including 401(k) and 403(b)
Carbon4 Finance CARBON IMPACT ANALYTICS (CIA) For climate transition IBAT Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT)
risk
ICE European ESG Template (EET) solution
Carbon4 Finance CIARA – Carbon Impact Analytics for Real Assets
ICE ICE Climate Physical Risk Data
Carbon4 Finance CLIMATE RISK IMPACT SCREENING (CRIS) for Climate
ICE ICE Climate Transition Analytics Tool
Physical Risk
ICE ICE Emissions & Targets Data
ChemSec ChemScore
ICE ICE ESG Company Data
Clarity AI Clarity AI Sustainability Tech Kit
ICE ICE ESG Geo-Analyzer Tool
Climate Bonds Initiative Green Bond Database
ICE ICE Impact Bond Classification Service
Climate Bonds Initiative Social and Sustainability Bond Database
ICE ICE UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Data –
Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Intelligence
Municipal Bonds
Covalence SA ESG news data
ICE SFDR Principal Adverse Impact (PAI) Data
Covalence SA ESG ratings
ICE Task-force for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD)
Cross Dependency Initiative Physical Risk Analytics Data
– (XDI Pty Ltd)
Iceberg Data Lab Carbon Footprint
Data Company One Inc GreenScanr
Iceberg Data Lab CBF – Corporate Biodiversity Footprint
DEEP Brasil Informação & DEEP Value©
Iceberg Data Lab Dependency scores
Tecnologia S.A. (“DEEP”)
Iceberg Data Lab Positive contribution biodiversity
Dun & Bradstreet D&B ESG Intelligence
Iceberg Data Lab Positive Contribution Climate
DYDON AI TAXO TOOL: AI Solution for Sustainable Finance
Iceberg Data Lab SB2A – Science-Based 2°C Alignment
Equileap Equileap: Gender Equality and Diversity&Inclusion Data
Impact Institute Global Impact Database
ESG Book Corporate ESG Analytics
Impact-Cubed Empirical ESG and Impact Data
ESG Book Decarbonisation Analytics Suite
Impak Analytics iSA, iS, impak Score™, SFDR+i
ESG Book ESG Data
imug rating ESG Data Solutions
ESG Book ESG Performance Score
InfluenceMap FinanceMap
ESG Book EU Taxonomy Data Set
InfluenceMap LobbyMap
ESG Book Risk Score
Inrate AG Adverse Product Screening
ESG Book SFDR Data Solutions
Inrate AG Biodiversity Data
ESG Book Sustainable Revenues
Inrate AG Business Activity Impact Assessment
ESG Book The Reporting Exchange
Inrate AG Climate Data
EthiFinance ESG RATINGS
Inrate AG ESG Controversies Screening
EthiFinance OneTrack
Inrate AG ESG Impact Rating
FAIRR Initiative Coller FAIRR Climate Risk Tool
Inrate AG EU Taxonomy Data
FAIRR Initiative Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index
Inrate AG SDG Impact Assessment
Fathom Global Fathom’s Product Stack
Inrate AG SFDR Data
Fathom Global Fathom’s Product Stack
Inrate AG UNGC Screening
FE fundinfo ESG Solutions
Inter-American Development Green Bond Transparency Platform (GBTP)
FE fundinfo Fund EET Data Bank
Field Gibson Media Environmental Finance Data ISS STOXX Climate & Nature
Futurepast: Inc Verification (Third Party) ISS STOXX Engagement & Bespoke Solutions
Global Canopy ENCORE ISS STOXX ESG Raw Data
Global Canopy Forest 500 ISS STOXX Ratings & Rankings
Global Canopy Forest IQ ISS STOXX Regulatory Solutions
GLYNT.AI GLYNT ISS STOXX Screening & Conteroversies
Greenomy Greenomy CSRD & EU Taxonomy Solution
ISS-Corporate Celsia Sustainability Reporting Software
GRESB Asset-based Analytics
ISS-Corporate Second Party Opinion
GRESB Asset-based Company Indicators – Essential and
Advanced Japan Exchange Group, Inc. Corporate Governance Information Search

GRESB Asset-level Indicators Japan Exchange Group, Inc. JPX ESG Indices

Hashstacs Pte Ltd ESGpedia - Nexus for Sustainability LSEG LSEG Sustainable Finance and Investment Solutions

6 www.environmental-finance.com
 View the full ESG Data Guide 2024 here

COMPANY PRODUCT COMPANY PRODUCT

Luxembourg Stock Exchange LGX DataHub S&P Global Global Integrated Energy Model
MainStreet Partners GSS Bonds Data&Ratings S&P Global Indices by S&P Dow Jones Indices
Matter Sustainability Insights Suite
S&P Global Ratings S&P Global Ratings Second Party Opinions, featuring
Metric ESG Reporting Suite for Venture & Growth Capital Shades of Green
Mettle Capital Open Source Materiality Assessment for CSRD reporting Sanctify ESG Sanctify ESG
Minerva Analytics Climate Voting Policy SAP Fioneer SAP ESG KPI Engine
Minerva Analytics ESG Custom Rating SDI Asset Owner Platform SDI Asset Owner Platform
Minerva Analytics ESG Data SG Analytics Pvt. Ltd ESG Research and Data Services
Minerva Analytics ESG Rating SG Analytics Pvt. Ltd IDEAT
Minerva Analytics Net-Zero Voting Policy SG Analytics Pvt. Ltd News Aggregator/Controversies Monitoring Tool
Minerva Analytics SDG Mapping: assessing alignment & impact
SG Analytics Pvt. Ltd PMT
Moody’s Ratings Moody’s Ratings Net Zero Assessment
SGS Assurance - ESG Disclosures and Sustainability Report
Moody’s Ratings Moody’s Ratings Second Party Opinion Assurance
SGS Second-Party Opinions on Sustainable Bonds and Loans
Moody's Climate Data by Moody’s
SGS Sustainable Supply Chain Risk Audit and Monitoring
Moody's ESG Data by Moody’s
SGS UN SDG Impact Assurance
Morningstar Sustainalytics Climate Data for Companies and Funds
SIGWATCH SIGWATCH
Morningstar Sustainalytics ESG Risk Ratings
SIX EU ESG Manufacturer (EET Data)
Morningstar Sustainalytics EU Action Plan Solutions
Solability Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index - ESG country
Morningstar Sustainalytics Impact Metrics
rating and analysis
Morningstar Sustainalytics Low Carbon Transition Ratings
SRI Services Fund EcoMarket
Morningstar Sustainalytics Physical Climate Risk Metrics
Sugi Sugi
Morningstar Sustainalytics Second Party Opinions
Sustainable Fitch Sustainable Fitch - ESG Impact Ratings
Morningstar Sustainalytics Stewardship Services
Sustainable Fitch Sustainable Fitch - Impact Metrics for Labelled Bonds
Morningstar Sustainalytics Sustainalytics Product Involvement
Sustainable Fitch Sustainable Fitch - Leveraged Finance ESG Entities
MSCI Climate and Nature Solutions by MSCI Scores
MSCI Sustainability Solutions by MSCI Sustainable Fitch Sustainable Fitch - Second Party Opinions
Nasdaq Carbon Removal Certificate - CORC Data Sustainable Fitch Sustainable Fitch - Sustainable Bonds Data

Nasdaq Nasdaq ESG Data Hub Thomas Schumann Water TSC Water Security Index

Nasdaq Nasdaq ESG Data Portal Upright Project CSRD double materiality
Upright Project Net impact - quantified holistic impact
Nasdaq Nasdaq Sustainable Bond Network
Upright Project SDG revenue alignment
Observatorio Español de la Informe Anual OFISO
Financiación Sostenible Upright Project SFDR PAI indicators & EU taxonomy data
PortageBay Engagement Copilot Verco ESG data collection and reporting programmes

PortageBay Portageur: AI that reads and analyzes 50,000 ESG Verco Sustainability Assurance Services
documents Verisk Maplecroft Geospatial ESG Solutions
PortageBay Sustainability Copilot Verisk Maplecroft Sovereign ESG Ratings
Preqin ESG Solutions World Resources Institute AgriAdapt

Principles for Responsible Resolution Database World Resources Institute ClimateWatch

Investment World Resources Institute Energy Access Explorer
RepRisk RepRisk Data Feeds World Resources Institute Forest Atlases
RepRisk RepRisk ESG Risk Platform World Resources Institute Global Forest Watch

RepRisk RepRisk Geospatial World Resources Institute Global Forest Watch Pro
World Resources Institute Global Water Watch
RepRisk RepRisk Monitor
World Resources Institute LandMark
RepRisk RepRisk Reports
World Resources Institute MapBuilder
Reputex RepuTex Energy
World Resources Institute Ocean Watch
Riskthinking.ai Beyond Hindsight Climate Risk reports
World Resources Institute Open Timber Portal
Riskthinking.ai Climate Earth Digital Twin (CDT)
World Resources Institute PREPdata
Riskthinking.ai VELO
World Resources Institute Resource Watch
RS Metrics ESGSignals®
World Resources Institute Systems Change Lab
S&P Global Clean Energy Procurement Service
World Resources Institute Water, Peace and Security - Global Early Warning Tool
S&P Global Corporate Emissions Solution
World Resources Institute WRI Aqueduct
S&P Global ESG, Climate & Nature
World Resources Institute WRI Open Data Portal
S&P Global ESG, Climate, and Nature Sustainability Solutions by S&P
Global Sustainable1 | 2024

7 www.environmental-finance.com
 Nature data –
overwhelmingly complex,
but a need-to-know

Amid rapidly growing demand for nature data, changing investor requirements and artificial intelligence
will shift the market, writes Genevieve Redgrave

A
s companies and investors wake up to the
importance of measuring their nature risks,
dependencies and impacts, demand for data
is booming.
The launch of the recommendations of
the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial
Disclosures (TNFD) in September was a
significant milestone in the development of
the market.
The TNFD set out 14 ‘core’ recommended disclosure points,
covering impacts and dependencies. Organisations are also
encouraged to carry out a LEAP assessment, to locate their
interface with nature, evaluate their dependencies and impacts,
assess material risks and opportunities and prepare a report.
As of the end of June, 416 organisations said they will report on
a voluntary basis.
Nature and impact data provider GIST Impact tells Environmental
Finance that the topic of nature data “has been supercharged by
TNFD in many ways”. Pavan Sukhdev, CEO and co-founder, says
this has been “a huge force multiplier, in understanding risks and “Clients need to wake up and
how a company’s strategy, risk management and operations play”.
While TNFD is “an amazing accomplishment”, Thomas Moran, realise this data is future-proofing
vice president and head of biodiversity data products at GIST
Impact, argues that the framework is “not particularly prescriptive
them against the risks. It’s worth
in terms of the actions that a company should take”. spending money on”
Many of its customers are “overwhelmed” by the topic of nature,
he says, with many “finding it challenging to make sense of the NatureMetrics’ Laura Plant
disparate guidance that’s out there”.

8 www.environmental-finance.com

Mahima Sukhdev, GIST Impact
Mahima Sukhdev, senior vice president of commercial
development at GIST Impact, argues that “most sectors are
approaching this with fresh eyes”, with many financial institutions
not knowing what data they are looking for.
Many still “haven’t realised that nature cannot be measured
through one metric”, in a similar way that climate can be tracked
through greenhouse gas emissions. While a high-level singular
metric could theoretically be developed, she says “this would lose
a lot of the important detail, and it hasn’t been done successfully
in the market”.
Environmental DNA (eDNA) provider NatureMetrics says
there are huge disparities in levels of understanding of the topic,
and often the data provider’s role is to help “frame how to think
about nature and biodiversity [for the client], wherever they are in
their journey”.
Hannah Skeates, director of nature strategy for finance and
environmental markets at NatureMetrics, says it is working with
many on “the conceptualisation of not just how you can think
about risks and dependencies and impact opportunities but also
what that can subsequently mean for their organisation”.
For those working on TNFD in particular, the data provider
is supporting clients on how they might approach the LEAP
framework, whereas others are much further along in the process,
and are collecting eDNA on their sites to report in line with
disclosure metrics.
Regulations a driving force
However, Laura Plant, business development director at
NatureMetrics, argues that “actually most are looking to focus
on their requirements [under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability
Reporting Directive], and said they’ll worry about TNFD later”.
Under the CSRD, large organisations based or operating in the
EU will have to report in line with the European Sustainability
Reporting Standards. These are largely aligned with the TNFD’s
metrics. So, for many, nature reporting is no longer purely a
9 www.environmental-finance.com
voluntary endeavour – further increasing pressure on data
providers.
Serhat Öngen, nature and biodiversity product lead at Clarity
AI, says regulatory requirements are pushing some organisations
further ahead.
Financial institutions in countries such as France, where
mandatory disclosures have already been in place for some time,
“are typically ahead of the curve compared to their counterparts
in other regions”.
Introduced in 2021, France’s Article 29 of the Energy and
Climate Act requires financial organisations to disclose their
biodiversity-related risks and strategies. It was seen as the first
mandatory biodiversity reporting regime in the world.
French data provider Iceberg Data Lab launched one of the first
biodiversity footprinting tools to support the implementation of
this legislation. This uses Mean Species Abundance as a key metric
to assess a company’s impacts and dependencies.
Other footprinting tools are also now available, including a joint
collaboration between Clarity AI and GIST Impact.
Data providers expect the anticipation of further mandatory
reporting to continue driving demand, particularly after the
International Sustainability Standards Board announced it will
look at nature within its next programme of work.
It is not yet known whether this will culminate in a nature-
specific standard – to join its existing sustainability standards – or
merely extra guidance.
Growing sophistication of data demands
Since the TNFD’s launch, conversations have “evolved into more
substantive dialogues with financial institutions that have a more
firm understanding of their nature-related needs”, Clarity AI’s
Öngen says. He anticipates interest from financial institutions to
continue growing.
As understanding of the theme develops, this is driving a shift in
the types of data being requested, NatureMetrics’ Skeates argues:
“There seems to be a move happening, from purely thinking
about the negative pressures on nature to considering what the
actual state of nature looks like across the sites, adding that up and
tracking [it] over time”. This requires more coverage of primary,
site-based data.
“We’re evolving our proposition to think about how to make that
more accessible and create holistic measures for clients, so they
can think about that relative to the ecosystems [being studied]”,
she adds.
GIST Impact
GIST Impact’s nature and biodiversity datasets cover 80
metrics at portfolio, company and asset level for over 14,500
publicly listed companies. This combines site-specific datasets
with geospatial details to create a “holistic analysis of nature-
related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities”.
Over the past year it has also expanded its product offering,
including a web tool which allows investors to “see the
environmental cost” of a potential investments compared with
other options.
It recently told Environmental Finance how it is using artificial
intelligence in its operations. Find out more here.
 ClarityAI
Clarity AI houses around 120 nature-related metrics, based on
publicly reported data and estimations using machine learning
models. Its tools fit into three themes: dependency and risks,
biodiversity footprint and TNFD tools.
The latter includes a dataset with metrics for identifying
exposure to sensitive locations as well as a dataset specific to
identifying nature related opportunities.
Serhat Öngen, nature and biodiversity product lead, said it
works with each company, as “many of the metrics involved
can be quite complex at any level of sophistication”. He added
it will look to “select the right nature-related solutions based
on their goals and sustainable investment solutions based on
their goals and sustainable investment frameworks to ensure
they rightly assess nature-related dependencies, impacts,
risks and opportunities.”
GIST Impact’s Moran agrees that most client interest is in site-
level data. “Given the complexity of the topic, customers really like
to start their journey with something physical and tangible they can
connect with”.
With growing concern about greenwashing, having the physical
data to back up claims will be crucial, Skeates says.
Eye in the sky
Satellites were often cited as one of the key technologies driving
the growth of nature data, with NatureMetrics labelling it as a
gamechanger for its work.
“Technology on the ground is great, but you need to be able
to scale this over large areas, and satellites allow you to do this”,
NatureMetrics’ Plant says.
“Before, it was too difficult to directly measure the health of
nature” but now, being able to combine eDNA with emerging
technologies such as satellite data or bioacoustics has enabled the
better understanding of habitats at large. She says this has been a
“big development” in understanding habitats at large.
The potential of AI
Chris Baldock, head of data methodology at Planet Tracker,
which provides country-level data on direct and indirect nature
dependencies of around 5,500 products, says artificial intelligence
(AI) has the potential to fill data gaps and analyse large sets of data.
It could also help ‘clean up’ data – particularly satellite data,
which is often provided in the form of raw data and requires
adjustments based on variables such as cloud coverage and satellite
angle. AI could help the cleaning of this data at a much faster rate,
he says.
Clarity AI’s Öngen was also positive about the impact of AI,
saying it has the potential to “better meet clients’ expectations
to really integrate nature-related data into their decision-making
processes”.
It could help speed up data collection as well as turn ‘unstructured
data’ into data that would be useable for investors. This might
include data from news sources or satellites.
“These are particularly powerful as they can be location-specific
and critical for nature and biodiversity”, he says.
GIST Impact is using machine learning to estimate missing data
on around 6,000 companies, based on what it knows about the
company, the sector and competitor companies.
10
Serhat Öngen, ClarityAI
But Pavan warns there are “rough and ready” data estimates on
the market, and says he is “very concerned” about the accuracy
of some of the models. He calls for greater standards to help give
“credibility”, and free up smaller companies to innovate, instead of
trying to develop internal standards and methodologies.
NatureMetrics – which has been using AI models to track nature
changes over time, and then “ground-truthing” it each year with
site-level technology – also says it is “aware of AI challenges”.
Plant says: “Our recommendation to clients is to keep checking
in and verifying that it’s an accurate reflection of what’s actually
happening”.
Data gaps
However, major challenges and data gaps remain. In particular,
value chain data can be “elusive” and can be a real challenge for
large companies who are having to track indirect impact across
multiple geographies and sectors.
While Scope 3 emissions remain a challenge, indirect nature
impacts from supply chains are “even more challenging because
most of the impacts happen downstream”, GIST Impact’s Moran
says.
“If you’re a financial institution that has a global portfolio, there
will be a lot of gaps in your ability to robustly quantify impact,” he
adds.
Having the physical data of where suppliers’ assets are located,
becomes “especially more important in that context”, GIST’s
Mahima Sukhdev adds, “to create a picture of the overall
biodiversity impact”.
Kate Turner, global head of responsible investment at First
Sentier Investors, similarly calls for “supply chain data to be
cracked, as this will help solve biodiversity, human rights and
climate change challenges”.
First Sentier has developed a toolkit to help investors begin
assessing water and deforestation risks within their portfolio. It
www.environmental-finance.com
The second age of ESG integration:
from transparency to accountability
It is no longer sufficient for financial institutions to be transparent about ESG performance: they must now
be accountable. That will require better ESG data, says Matthieu Maurin of Iceberg Data Labs
W
e are moving from an age
of transparency to one of
accountability. As the sustainable
finance industry matures, it must
make a better account of the environmental,
social and governance (ESG) performance of
its products and investments. And, with growing
scrutiny of the value added by sustainable
investment – by both market participants and by
regulators – it has never been more important for
the industry to build on solid foundations.
As with every part of the financial markets, Matthieu Maurin
those foundations comprise data and information.
As we move from transparency to accountability, we will need robust,
high-quality and comprehensive ESG data if the sustainable finance
industry is to disarm the sceptics and demonstrate its worth.
A decade after Paris
The signing in 2015 of the Paris Agreement marked the beginning
of the integration of ESG within the finance sector. It was the
start of the road towards net zero emissions, and explicitly called
for financial flows to become consistent with that objective.
Investors wanted to understand if their money was contributing
to this effort.
Leading companies that weren’t already disclosing their emissions
began to do so, signalling their first steps towards decarbonisation
– albeit on a suitably long-term time horizon. Voluntary frameworks
emerged, such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial
Disclosures, complementing older and partial disclosure systems like
CDP and the Global Reporting Initiative.
Financial institutions followed suit, with pledges to reach net zero.
And, following demand, they rushed to market with many low-carbon
or climate-friendly investment products, for institutional clients and
retail investors alike.
Scrutiny grows
However, many of those products rest on shaky foundations.
Much corporate climate data is partial. Many companies,
particularly smaller ones, and those in emerging markets, don’t
disclose much, if any, ESG data. Companies are selective in what
they report. Although around 80% of a typical company’s climate
impact results from emissions in its value chain, few companies
disclose their Scope 3 footprint.
This can lead to climate-labelled investment products that don’t
do what they promise. We used our Scope 3 data to analyse one of
the most popular climate-themed indexes in the market, one which
claims to be ‘low-carbon’. We found that it selected four issuers
11
included in the top 30 global GHG emitters when
Scope 3 is included: issuers that are high risk
from a climate standpoint. At best, the sponsors
of products with similar shortcomings could
find themselves accused of greenwashing, with
reputational impacts. At worse, they could be
penalised for mis-selling, with resulting fines and
regulatory sanctions.
Financial institutions face even greater
challenges when it comes to scrutiny of their net
zero pledges. For instance, more than 675 firms
have made commitments under the Glasgow
Financial Alliance for Net Zero to decarbonise
their lending and investments – but with little clarity or comparability
across climate impact across different asset classes, such pledges are,
at present, almost impossible to verify.
Regulators recognise the importance of this issue and are
beginning to act.The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Report Directive
will require companies to disclose material Scope 3 emissions. Scope
3 reporting is expected to be required under the UK’s Sustainable
Disclosure Requirement. The US’s Securities and Exchange
Commission recently stepped back from mandating Scope 3 report,
but we believe it is a question of when, not if.
Held to account
But these regulatory efforts will take time. Inevitably, companies
(and regulators) around the world will move at different speeds,
leading to the disclosure of different ESG data, often in different
formats. Quality will vary. Gaps will exist, between sectors and
across geographies.
This is where ESG data providers add value. To ensure the rigour,
robustness, quality and comparability of ESG data, extensive work is
required: using reported data as the starting point, on which models
are trained and backtested, enabling gaps to be filled and quality
enhanced.
These processes, and the specialist teams of analysts needed to
effectively manage them, can be built by larger financial institutions, or
they can outsource this work to data providers. But make no mistake:
in the new age of ESG accountability, without high-quality ESG data,
financial institutions offering sustainable investment products and
making sustainability commitments will be under intense scrutiny.
They risk exposing themselves to accusation of misleading their
clients and investors and to serious regulatory consequences if their
pledges are not based on sound approaches and robust data.
Matthieu Maurin is CEO of Iceberg Data Labs, based in Paris. For
more information, see: www.icebergdatalab.com
www.environmental-finance.com

Hanah Skeates, NatureMetrics
pulls together a variety of publicly accessible data sources. When
creating this toolkit, “what we saw was gaps, rather than conflicts
[of data]”, Turner says, “particularly on biodiversity sensitive
areas where the vast majority of information is blank”.
Data providers warned that the marine and ocean theme also
has a significant lack of coverage.
Nature data is worth paying for
However, potential challenges for data providers could be much
more fundamental. While many in the market may use data gaps
or limited understanding of the theme as a reason for inaction,
NatureMetrics’ Plant says “they don’t mean it’s too hard, they
mean it’s too expensive. Their attitude needs to change”.
She points towards some of its infrastructure clients who
are “spending less than 1% of the total cost of developing the
project on anything to do with nature”. This funding is not
exclusively channelled towards data either, and usually must
cover environmental assessments as well.
“Clients need to wake up and realise this data is future proofing
them against the risks. It’s worth spending money on”.
Esther An, chief sustainability officer at CDL, a Singaporean
real estate company, recently told an event in London that the
technology needed is often “not cheap’, and it can be difficult to
prove to boards why it is necessary to approve funding”.
Highlighting the material importance of nature is critical to
securing funding approval for data.
CEO of Iceberg Data Lab Matthieu Maurin recently told
Environmental Finance that it is important to send “the right
signals”, which should include investing in quality data, models
and action that will improve the models.
Thinking it should be a zero-cost approach is “misleading”, he
says. While he is supportive of an open-source hub of reported
data, he said it is “delusional” for firms to wait that long.
Open-source data
An open-source hub of reported data would be beneficial for the
data market as a whole, to help contribute to innovation, research
and the development of new models, he said. It can also help
emerging markets, which might not otherwise be able to pay for
third-party data.
12
NatureMetrics eDNA
UK-based NatureMetrics has become the de-facto leader of
monitoring eDNA, the DNA that is found in blood, mucus, hair
or deceased remains that have been left behind by organisms
in water, soil, sediment or the air.
Companies around the world independently collect samples
on their sites – led by NatureMetrics guidance – and are sent
to a lab in the south of England or North America to identify its
‘barcode genes’.
Each sample has the potential to identify hundreds of
species, with its database currently housing ‘thousands’ of
different species from around the globe.
NatureMetrics has also recently started combining this
ground-level data with satellite data, to help build a wider
picture of habitat and species changes across sites.
Environmental Finance recently visited NatureMetrics’ lab
to find out more about its monitoring capabilities. Read here.
However, developing open-sources of modelled data should
not be supported, Maurin argues, as it “breaks the incentive
to invest” and suggests financial institutions should not put
money into identifying and addressing nature-related risks and
opportunities – and this notion is “absurd!”
Other data providers are also broadly supportive of the premise
of open data. GIST Impact’s Mahima Sukhdev, says more
recognition needs to be given towards NGOs which have been
“collecting this data for some time”, and often providing it for
free.
This includes Global Canopy’s Forest IQ which pulls together
public data to create comprehensive coverage of deforestation.
Niki Mardas, CEO, agrees that, given NGOs and charities have
been working in this space before it became “trendy”, they have
extensive data records which can be used.
The TNFD announced in mid-2023 that it was working on a
global, publicly accessible facility for nature-related data, similar
to open-source platforms being developed on climate.
It suggested this would “connect and expand” existing
national and sub-national level reported data and incorporate
private sector nature-related data sources into a shared platform.
However, it has been suggested since that the facility might not be
a physical platform, but instead a data standard. 
Iceberg Data Lab
Launched in 2019, Iceberg Data Lab’s (IDL) Corporate
Biodiversity Footprint tool has become one of the leading
tools to assess biodiversity impact throughout a company’s
value chain. It uses the Mean Species Abundance metric to
generate an annual biodiversity impact score.
Amongst IDL’s other product offerings is Wonderpus,
which creates an impact score for over 1,200 sectors and
2,300 products and services, and can be tailored to specific
portfolios.
IDL, which is used by around 50 financial institutions
globally, recently raised $10 million in its second funding
round. It said this will be used to expand its global presence,
develop its product pipeline and invest in new technologies.
www.environmental-finance.com
Bringing clarity to ESG data
For both consumers and producers of ESG data, the growing complexity of the landscape is creating
profound challenges. Artificial intelligence can be a game-changer, says Ángel Agudo, CPO at Clarity AI
Environmental Finance: Please
introduce Clarity AI and explain how you
generally apply AI.
Ángel Agudo: Clarity AI is a global
sustainability tech company that uses
technology and AI to provide data-driven
environmental and social insights for decision-
making to financial institutions, corporates,
governments and end-consumers. Our clients
in the investment segment manage over $60
trillion in assets, and include some of the
world’s largest asset managers, like BlackRock.
We provide value across three dimensions:
data collection; methodologies to fill in the gaps Ángel Agudo
and transform the data into useful information;
and data management and analytics tools.
As a digital-native company, we apply technology and AI across
our offerings, which include: scalable data solutions for extraction,
mapping, quality assurance and aggregation; tailored insights
and analytics for any sustainability-related use case; and seamless
integration into clients’ workflows via widgets, API and standalone
apps.
EF: What are the key shortcomings of ESG data?
AA: Clearly, there is room for improvement. According to a recent
survey by Bloomberg, 63% of financial market participants consider
quality and coverage issues with company-reported data to be their
biggest concern when dealing with ESG data.
There are three key challenges that can only be solved through
advanced technology. First, a lot of meaningful data is communicated
in unstructured formats. Second, there is a lack of standardisation, with
more than 860 ESG regulations and standards in place, according to
the Principles for Responsible Investment. Not only that: companies
may not report metrics consistently or they might present them in
different ways. In fact, we found that one in five companies disclose
different emissions data to CDP compared to their sustainability
reports. Third, the poor quality of the data per se is also an issue,
with potential errors from companies when doing their calculations
and users when extracting data. Our research on data discrepancies
revealed that 80% of errors found in data providers were due to
manual work.
EF. How can AI help – and what are its limits?
AA: AI can truly be a game-changer in collecting information and
analysing it in meaningful ways to better understand companies’
sustainability performance.
As an example, we use AI to increase data collection by 40%
compared to the alternatives. It also allows us to validate data by
comparing it with historical performance from the same company
and its peers, and to improve our ESG data estimates to fill in the
gaps where companies might not be reporting. We use AI to capture
13
additional data: for example, our AI model
processes more than 300,000 articles every day,
classifying potential corporate controversies,
connecting them with companies affected, and
assessing their materiality. Most recently, we
have launched new analytical and reporting
capabilities to help our clients make sense
of complex data and reduce time spent in
reporting from hours of manual work to
literally two clicks.
There are some limitations to AI when
models are not properly trained and
maintained, which can affect the accuracy of
the results, leading to a loss of confidence. At
Clarity AI, we always provide references to the
source of the information and use retrieval-
augmented generation to connect the results of our analysis with
underlying facts.
Another challenge is the lack of expertise in AI models: they are
typically trained using generic information. To ensure the accuracy of
the results, which is paramount for decision-making and reporting,
we mitigate this limitation by fine-tuning the models with domain
experts. We have been training these models for over seven years,
since our creation. For us, AI is not a recent development, it’s at the
core of what we do.
A third challenge relates to the determinism and consistency of the
results. These models typically are non-deterministic, which means
that when they attempt to be creative with their results, they may
introduce randomness. We prevent this by building guardrails that
ensure our system doesn’t go in unintended directions.
EF: How should reporting companies respond to the greater
use of AI?
AA: Companies are on a learning curve on ESG disclosures due
to growing regulations and reporting frameworks. By 2028, more
than 50,000 companies will fall under the Corporate Sustainability
Reporting Directive, increasing internal complexities in ESG data
collection and compliance processes.
We believe that companies should embrace AI to navigate this
reporting landscape and the added pressure from other stakeholders.
As experts in the field, we can enhance the precision and depth of
companies’ ESG data management. We apply rigorous scrutiny to
ensure data accuracy, connect data points to reveal valuable insights,
and conduct assessments to fully understand the data’s implications.
By providing this detailed context, we help them identify potential
issues to refine their systems and improve their overall ESG reporting
and compliance processes.
All in all, AI can support companies in achieving greater control
and accuracy over their data across the value chain.
Ángel Agudo is Chief Product Officer at Clarity AI. For more
information, see: https://clarity.ai
www.environmental-finance.com
 Will AI be transformative
for ESG data? (Part one)
The AI revolution is already transforming the ESG data landscape. But how much trust should we place
in the bots, asks Peter Cripps
T
he noise surrounding artificial intelligence (AI)
has grown clamorous in recent months, as
the technology rapidly advances, inserting its
increasingly powerful tentacles into our everyday
lives and driving tech stocks higher.
Just as there is speculation about the potential
for AI to transform our society and economy,
it could also prove transformative for the
environmental, social and governance (ESG) data industry.
AI has for years been used in various ways by ESG data
providers, but as the technology becomes more sophisticated, its
uptake and applications are growing.
This series of features aims to explore whether AI could be a
game changer for ESG data.
Perhaps the best place to begin our investigation is by picking
the brains of ChatGPT, which describes itself as “a conversational
AI model [using] a large language model (LLM) fine-tuned
specifically for generating human-like text responses in a
conversational context”.
Asked whether AI could be transformative for ESG data,
14
“We believe there has been a step-
change in the abilities of AI”
Ashley Lester, MSCI
ChatGPT replies within seconds: “Absolutely”, listing numerous
ways. (See box at end of article for full response.)
It concludes: “Overall, AI has the potential to revolutionise
the way ESG data is collected, analysed, and utilised, ultimately
driving greater transparency, sustainability, and accountability
across industries and financial markets.”
Human beings that work in the sustainable finance industry are
also positive about the potential of AI.
“AI’s rapid processing abilities allow for swift analysis of large
datasets, far exceeding human capacity,” says Stuart Cullinan, chief
technology officer at MainStreet Partners. “This rapid analysis,
coupled with AI’s prowess in detecting patterns and integrating
multimodal data, allows organisations to quickly identify essential
www.environmental-finance.com
Artificial Intelligence in Morningstar Sustainalytics’ Information value chain*
Source: Morningstar Sustainalytics. *ML: Machine learning, NLP: Natural language processing, NLU: Natural language understanding, LLM: Large language model.
sustainability insights and trends.”
Consultancy MainStreet Partners uses AI to fill the gaps in
ESG data, extract KPIs from ‘unstructured’ data and to research
controversial behaviours and establish sentiment on corporations
as part of its analysis of the sustainability of funds.
Ashley Lester, global head of research at ESG data provider
MSCI, says: “While AI has been a work-in-progress for decades
– and at MSCI we have used various approaches to AI for many
years – we believe there has been a step-change in the abilities of
AI.
“The generative capacity for AI in particular means that there
will be many new uses, and potentially substantial increases in the
productivity of certain types of work, over coming years.”
How can AI help generate ESG data?
There are many benefits that AI can bring to ESG data collection.
The most obvious is the speed and volume of data it can process.
ESG data is becoming increasingly diverse and abundant,
encompassing the growing reams of data disclosed by corporates
as well as a slew of alternative datasets, including satellite data,
news and academic journals, and other articles scraped from the
internet and social media.
ESG rating agencies are increasingly tapping into – and trying to
make sense of – this confusing morass of data.They are increasingly
using AI to help them process it.
Morningstar Sustainalytics, for example, said in a recent
whitepaper on Artificial Intelligence for ESG Assessments that,
having started using AI in 2014, it now employs it “along its entire
information value chain”. (See chart.)
AI can be used to “read vast amounts of data quickly and
consistently”, explains MSCI’s Lester: “Almost by definition, ESG
15
data tends to be complex and multi-layered – it tends not to be
nicely arranged like accounting data. So, AI can naturally help in
many places.
“An example is using AI to categorise companies’ labour policies
and practices. We can use AI to ‘read’ company reports and
consistently identify the ‘highest level of oversight for workforce
diversity’ or assess the ‘strength of material non-pay benefits’.”
Standardising unstructured data
ESG data can take many forms and much of it is ‘unstructured’.
AI can be used to process unstructured data, such as words or
addresses, converting it into numerical information that can be
more easily processed.
Chandini Jain, founder and CEO of Auquan, which uses AI to
turn unstructured data into “actionable” ESG data, says: “The raw
data used to generate ESG data is generally unstructured, which
means it’s difficult for traditional computer programs to analyse,
and demands significant manual effort.
“AI can solve a painful problem every ESG team experiences:
collecting data from multiple portfolio companies or general
managers and standardising it for reporting purposes. This
soaks up a ton of analyst time and is a workflow ideally suited for
generative AI.”
Cullinan at Mainstreet Partners says: “AI can streamline the
extraction of the information from public sources like company
sustainability reports and regulatory filings using advanced
language and multimodal models. AI can do this at scale and with
consistent accuracy, whereas manually this can be prohibitively
costly, slow and error prone.”
MSCI’s Lester says: “An example of using AI on unstructured
data is leveraging AI algorithms to analyse satellite images for
www.environmental-finance.com

“Such tools will also enable a
greater level of external audit of
companies, which will be crucial
to ensuring that companies are
not manipulating the data and
perpetuating greenwashing”
Stuart Forbes, ARK Invest Europe
companies’ operating locations. By figuring out where companies
operate, we can better identify emerging biodiversity risks such as
changes in deforestation, water stress and other ecological loss.”
Filling gaps in data
One of the key challenges with ESG data is that it is often not
comprehensive, with data points being available for some
companies but not for others. Here, AI can play a role in helping
to fill gaps in data.
Cullinan at Mainstreet Partners says: “Machine learning models
excel in estimating missing (or inaccurate) ESG, sustainability and
impact data by analysing historical patterns or finding the factors
that tend to group companies together with respect to specific
KPIs that then allows for reasonable, gap-filling estimates or
predictions.”
Lorenzo Saa, chief sustainability officer at Clarity AI, also points
out that machine learning can help estimate missing numbers.
However, he adds that “estimation needs to be used with caution,
as in financial accounting”.
And he says there are limits to the predictive powers of AI. For
example, it can be used for Scope 1 and 2 emissions data, which
“we do, and we signal the confidence level of estimation”. But
other data types such as the number of women on boards cannot
be estimated.
16
Clarity AI uses machine learning and ‘big data’ to deliver
environmental and social insights.
Helping companies report
Stuart Forbes, head of ARK Invest Europe, an investor specialising
in technology, highlights AI’s potential to help companies to
report relevant ESG data, particularly smaller companies that
struggle to find the resources required.
“Perhaps one of the most crucial things holding back a
broadening out of the measuring and reporting of ESG data by
companies is cost. For many companies, it is extremely difficult
to find, and prohibitively expensive to hire, enough people with
expertise to deliver a fully baked sustainability programme.”
He points out that this has perverse consequences, as smaller
companies often have a bigger positive impact relative to their
revenues, yet are penalised by ESG data companies for their lack
of disclosure.
Forbes argues that AI can enable public companies to:
1. more easily structure their sustainability programmes using
more standardised templates and policies;
2. measure, record and report their emissions and other impacts
(which is more quantitative in nature); and
3. report on any initiatives and actions taken to remediate and/
or improve upon identified areas of weakness (which is more
qualitative in nature). This will contribute to broadening out
the proportion of companies that are tracking and reporting, he
argues.
“Crucially, such tools will also enable a greater level of external
audit of companies, which will be crucial to ensuring that
companies are not manipulating the data and perpetuating
greenwashing,” he adds.
He predicts that AI “will catalyse a huge growth in ESG data
reporting, across a broader set of public companies in the years
ahead”.
Saving time
AI’s ability to process information quickly has the potential to
save companies, ESG data providers and investors time.
Auquan’s Jain adds: “It’s not that AI-generated data is superior
to what human analysts can produce, it’s just that generative AI
solutions can process large volumes of unstructured data far faster
and more efficiently than humans can.
“Analysing reams of local news coverage, regulatory filings
and actions, lawsuits, shipping data, and company reports using
generative AI can achieve in minutes what would traditionally take
a team of analysts days or weeks. This frees up significant amounts
of analyst time that can be invested in covering more ground and
focusing on higher level analysis and decision-making.
“And analysts are human, and humans sometimes miss things
and make mistakes. In many cases, using generative AI to process
data produces output that is more comprehensive than what
humans can produce, because it’s better at identifying patterns
that are difficult for humans to catch.
“Processing the vast amounts of unstructured data to produce
the insights needed for ESG research and identifying reputational
risks can now be accomplished at scale quickly and efficiently
using generative AI. The need for more and more human analysts
to do all of the data work is no longer necessary.”
www.environmental-finance.com
Measuring ESG risk in an
ever-changing environment
Companies face a broad range of ESG risks that can significantly impact their business; measuring those
risks can lead to better outcomes for investors, says Adam Fleck, Morningstar Sustainalytics’ head of
research.
Environmental Finance: What are
material ESG issues?
Adam Fleck: ESG covers a wide range of
topics and potential issues that a company
can face. But not every industry faces the
same issues. The oil and gas industry, for
example, faces more environmental issues
than other industries.
Material ESG issues, or MEIs, organise the
thematic topics that can impact a company’s
enterprise value. Morningstar Sustainalytics
has identified 22 MEIs that businesses could
face, but only some issues are material to some
companies. At Morningstar Sustainalytics, we Adam Fleck, head of research,
spend a lot of time estimating how exposed Morningstar Sustainalytics
specific industries are to those 22 MEIs. Each
can present a unique risk to a company and requires specific oversight
and management.
EF: How important is it to understand MEIs?
AF: The MEIs are the building blocks behind our ESG Risk
Ratings, which are a cumulative tally of how exposed companies
are to those issues and how well we think they’re managing them.
However, it is important to note that they are a measure of risk.
If you think about ‘double materiality’, a common term in ESG,
there are two ways that ESG issues can affect a company and its
stakeholders. Firstly, there are the material outward-in-facing risks that thousands of companies.We aim to provide consistent, comparable,
can plague a business. For example, a highly pollutive company may
be at greater risk of the developments that a more sustainable world
might entail, such as carbon taxes or consumer backlashes. Such risks
differ from inward-out risks, which could impact key stakeholders
amid ongoing developments in society and the environment.We view
these risks and the MEIs that help us draw conclusions similar to any
other potential risks companies face.
EF: How can mismanagement of MEIs affect a business?
AF: Our Risk Rating measures unmanaged ESG risk because
companies that don’t address these risks are likely to see negative
effects on their future cash flows and, ultimately, their enterprise
value. Poor management of ESG issues can lead to consumer
backlash, a lack of preparedness for new regulation, or poor
decisions resulting from sub-optimal governance practices.
Poor management of MEIs can also lead to idiosyncratic events,
such as a data breach or health and safety issues.These types of issues
are measured through our Events Research and our Controversy
17
Research, which are additive to our Risk
Ratings.We are trying to recognise if companies
are walking the walk they say they will.
EF: How important is reliable, timely
and complete ESG data?
AF: The evolution of ESG data over the last
several years is welcome, but we are always
looking for comparable, consistent and
contextualised data - the ‘three Cs’. Having
those ‘three Cs’ allows us to see how different
companies are operating and the trends of
that data over time. This is where regulation
comes in, and groups like ISSB can help
standardise what companies are reporting
so investors can start to ask deeper, tougher
questions.
Indeed, companies that disclose more environmental and social
data in a timely, comparable fashion because they are mandated to
or because they feel like it’s helpful to investors will help investors
make better decisions, allowing them to better price material risks or
opportunities.
EF: What is Morningstar Sustainalytics doing to help
investors?
AF: Morningstar Sustainalytics provides Risk Ratings on
and transparent measurement of companies’ exposure and
management to those MEIs. We don’t take our position in the
industry lightly.
We have 250 indicators across those 22 MEIs to support our
research and help investors. Morningstar Sustainalytics also
advocates for greater data disclosure and management of ESG issues
because it can help companies perform better and have a real impact
on stakeholders.
ESG data is not as fast-moving as daily stock price movements.
We usually get annual or quarterly updates, but companies are in the
news every day. That’s how our Events and Controversies Research
can help us tell whether companies are really sticking by their policies
and governance or not.
Learn more about how investors can consider and incorporate
material ESG risks into their approach by downloading Fundamentals
of ESG Materiality the latest e-book from Morningstar Sustainalytics
www.environmental-finance.com
 Hey ChatGPT, what is AI?
Environmental Finance: What is AI?
ChatGPT: AI, or Artificial Intelligence, refers to the simulation of
human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer
systems. These processes include learning (the acquisition
of information and rules for using it), reasoning (using rules to
reach approximate or definite conclusions), and self-correction.
AI encompasses a wide range of technologies and approaches,
from simple rule-based systems to advanced machine learning
algorithms capable of complex pattern recognition and decision-
making. AI has applications in various fields, including but not
limited to healthcare, finance, transportation, education, and
entertainment.
EF: What are the different types of AI?
ChatGPT: Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be categorized into several
types based on their capabilities, functionalities, and approaches.
Here are some common types of AI:
1. Narrow AI (Weak AI): Narrow AI refers to AI systems that are
designed and trained for a specific task or a narrow range of
tasks. These systems excel at their designated tasks but cannot
generalize beyond them. Examples include virtual assistants like
Siri or Alexa, spam filters, recommendation systems, and image
recognition algorithms.
2. General AI (Strong AI): General AI refers to AI systems
that possess human-like intelligence and are capable of
understanding, learning, and performing any intellectual task
that a human can do. General AI remains largely theoretical and
is not yet realized. Achieving General AI would require machines
to exhibit consciousness and self-awareness.
3. Superintelligent AI: Superintelligent AI refers to AI systems that
surpass human intelligence across all domains and tasks. This
concept is often associated with scenarios depicted in science
fiction, where AI becomes vastly superior to human intelligence.
Achieving superintelligent AI raises significant ethical and
existential questions about its potential impact on society and
humanity.
4. Machine Learning (ML): Machine learning is a subset of AI that
focuses on enabling computers to learn from data and improve
their performance over time without being explicitly programmed.
ML algorithms can be categorized into supervised learning,
unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning, reinforcement
learning, and more.
5. Deep Learning: Deep learning is a subfield of machine learning
that utilizes neural networks with many layers (hence the term
“deep”) to learn complex patterns in data. Deep learning has
been particularly successful in tasks such as image and speech
recognition, natural language processing, and autonomous
driving.
6. Reinforcement Learning: Reinforcement learning is a type of
machine learning where an agent learns to make decisions by
interacting with an environment. The agent receives feedback in
the form of rewards or penalties based on its actions, allowing it
to learn the optimal behavior through trial and error.
These are broad categories, and there can be overlaps between
them. Many AI systems incorporate elements from multiple types,
and advancements in AI research continue to blur the lines between
these classifications.
EF: What are large language models?
ChatGPT: Large language models (LLMs) are a type of artificial
intelligence system designed to understand and generate human-
like text. They are built using deep learning techniques, particularly
using architectures like Transformers. LLMs are trained on vast
amounts of text data from the internet or other sources, learning
the statistical patterns and structures of language.
These models can perform a variety of natural language
processing tasks, including text generation, text summarization,
translation, question answering, sentiment analysis, and more.
18
They are capable of understanding context, generating coherent
and contextually relevant responses, and even mimicking human-
like conversation.
Some well-known examples of large language models include
GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) developed by OpenAI,
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers)
developed by Google, and T5 (Text-To-Text Transfer Transformer)
developed by Google Brain team. These models have been
increasingly influential in various fields, from customer service
chatbots to content generation and academic research.
EF: What is machine learning?
ChatGPT: Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence
(AI) that focuses on developing algorithms and techniques that
allow computers to learn from and make predictions or decisions
based on data. In traditional programming, developers explicitly
write rules and instructions for the computer to follow. However,
in machine learning, instead of programming explicit instructions,
developers train algorithms using large amounts of data to enable
the system to learn and improve its performance over time.
The core idea behind machine learning is to enable computers to
automatically learn from data without being explicitly programmed
for specific tasks. This is achieved through the following steps:
1. Data Collection: Gathering relevant data that contains
information about the problem domain.
2. Data Preprocessing: Cleaning, transforming, and preparing
the data for analysis. This may include tasks such as handling
missing values, encoding categorical variables, and scaling
numerical features.
3. Feature Engineering: Selecting or creating the most relevant
features (variables) from the data to use for training the model.
4. Model Selection: Choosing an appropriate machine learning
algorithm or model architecture based on the nature of the
problem and the available data. Common types of machine
learning algorithms include linear regression, decision trees,
support vector machines, neural networks, and more.
5. Training: Using the prepared data to train the chosen model by
adjusting its parameters to minimize the difference between its
predictions and the actual outcomes.
6. Evaluation: Assessing the performance of the trained model
using evaluation metrics and validation techniques to ensure that
it generalizes well to unseen data.
7. Deployment: Integrating the trained model into applications or
systems to make predictions or decisions on new, unseen data.
Machine learning has a wide range of applications across various
domains, including but not limited to:
• Predictive analytics
• Natural language processing
• Computer vision
• Recommender systems
• Fraud detection
• Medical diagnosis
• Autonomous vehicles
Overall, machine learning empowers computers to learn from data
and make intelligent decisions, thereby automating tasks and
driving innovations in numerous industries.
EF: What is natural language processing?
ChatGPT: Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field of artificial
intelligence (AI) that focuses on the interaction between computers
and human language. It encompasses the study and development
of algorithms and techniques that enable computers to understand,
interpret, and generate human language in a way that is both
meaningful and useful.
NLP deals with a wide range of tasks, including but not limited
to:
www.environmental-finance.com
 1. Text Understanding: Extracting meaning and semantics from
text, including tasks such as named entity recognition (identifying
names of people, places, organizations, etc.), part-of-speech
tagging, parsing, and sentiment analysis.
2. Text Generation: Creating human-like text based on given
prompts or inputs. This includes tasks such as language
translation, text summarization, and dialogue generation.
3. Speech Recognition: Transcribing spoken language into text.
This involves converting audio signals into written words and
understanding the meaning conveyed by the spoken words.
4. Language Translation: Translating text from one language to
another while preserving its meaning and context.
5. Information Retrieval: Finding relevant information from
large collections of text, such as web pages, documents, or
databases, based on user queries.
6. Question Answering: Providing accurate and relevant answers
to user questions posed in natural language.
NLP techniques rely on a combination of linguistics, computer
science, and machine learning. Common approaches include
statistical models, machine learning algorithms (such as neural
networks), and rule-based systems. These techniques allow
computers to analyze and understand the structure, semantics, and
context of human language, enabling a wide range of applications
in fields such as search engines, virtual assistants, chatbots,
sentiment analysis tools, and more.
Overall, NLP plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between
human communication and computer understanding, facilitating
more natural and effective interactions between humans and
machines.
EF: What is generative AI?
ChatGPT: Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence systems or
algorithms that have the capability to generate new content, such
19
as images, text, audio, or even entire virtual environments, that is
not directly copied from existing data. Generative AI models are
designed to learn the underlying patterns and structures of the data
they are trained on and then use this knowledge to create novel
examples that are similar to, but distinct from, the original data.
One of the most common approaches to generative AI is through
generative adversarial networks (GANs). GANs consist of two
neural networks: a generator and a discriminator. The generator
generates synthetic data, while the discriminator tries to distinguish
between real and synthetic data. Through an adversarial training
process, the generator learns to produce increasingly realistic data,
while the discriminator learns to become better at distinguishing
between real and fake data. This competitive process drives the
generator to create data that is indistinguishable from real data.
Generative AI has applications in various domains, including:
1. Image Generation: Generating realistic images of faces,
objects, scenes, or artworks.
2. Text Generation: Generating human-like text, such as articles,
stories, poems, or dialogues.
3. Audio Generation: Generating music, speech, or other audio
content.
4. Video Generation: Generating realistic video sequences or
animations.
5. Content Creation: Generating content for creative purposes,
such as artwork, design, or storytelling.
Generative AI has shown remarkable progress in recent years,
leading to the creation of highly realistic and convincing content.
However, it also raises ethical concerns, such as the potential for
generating fake news, misinformation, or deepfakes. As such,
responsible use and development of generative AI are important
considerations for researchers and practitioners in the field.
www.environmental-finance.com
Extracting maximum value from ESG data
Bloomberg’s global head of enterprise data content, Leila Sadiq, and global head of sustainable finance
data solutions, Nadia Humphreys, outline top ESG data trends and what firms should know to keep pace
Environmental Finance: What do you feel
like people most misunderstand about ESG
data?
Leila Sadiq:The value of integrated ESG
data with foundational reference data and
other datasets. When ESG data is viewed
in isolation, it is not nearly as insightful or
powerful as when ESG data points are
pulled into a firm’s existing data architecture.
Interoperability and linkage of ESG to
datasets such as corporate structure is key
for firms to gain a holistic understanding.
Bloomberg, with its strong foundation in Leila Sadiq
data excellence for 40+ years, has always
been very thoughtful about the quality and
structure of our ESG data. We provide clear transparency metrics
so clients understand the inputs and outputs, and build our data
products in such a way that they can more easily be combined with
our other industry leading foundational data for comprehensive
insights to support investment decisions and regulatory reporting
needs.
EF: What is one thing firms can do to better action their
ESG data?
LS: We have seen rising frustration with growing volumes of ESG
data and managing disparate ESG data solutions across providers.
For example, our 2024 European ESG data survey revealed the
leading ESG data management challenge was handling constantly
evolving and new data (41%) followed by linking ESG data to
existing data (25%). This is partly due to how time and resource
intensive it can be to onboard new ESG data so firms may only do
it once or twice a year.
When contending with ESG data volumes and evolving content,
quality and useability are critical factors. While Bloomberg is
constantly enhancing its ESG & Climate data to meet clients
needs, such as our recently launched CSRD solution, biodiversity
offering, and sustainable investment data solutions to simplify
screening processes, we are laser focused on ensuring our solutions
20
fit seamlessly into firms’ workflows.
Additionally, firms can use powerful data
management solutions, such as Bloomberg’s
DL+ ESG Manager. This solution acquires,
aggregates, organises and links a customer’s
Bloomberg Data License datasets, including
Bloomberg’s ESG data, with other vendors’
ESG data into a single Unified Data Model.
EF: ESG regulations have been a big
focus this year especially in preparation
of CSRD reporting. What should firms
Nadia Humphreys know about complying?
Nadia Humphreys: CSRD brings welcome
clarity and consistency to ESG reporting
in and outside of Europe. However, who reports and what
they report will change significantly from 2025. This presents
investment opportunities but also operational challenges.
The first requirement is to have a trusted source of all CSRD
disclosed data, and the ability to scale alongside the regulation to
collect and manage that data.
The second is adjusting existing data management tools and
investment processes to account for the new disclosed data.
Earlier reported data may be inconsistent with CSRD obligations,
or no longer be reported.
Bloomerg has observed that only ~20% of the quantitative
metrics asked in CSRD are a direct match to the commonly
reported ESG data we see in the market today so the scale of
change management will be significant.
As the breadth and depth of disclosure changes, Bloomberg’s
new CSRD data solution is positioned to help.
EF: Climate impact has also come up frequently this year.
How should investment firms be thinking about it?
NH: Climate change is a complex and interconnected landscape
of data, and there is clear investor appetite to both protect
long-term returns and invest in ways that have positive impact.
Measuring this can be difficult. For example, understanding the
link between an investment, its value chain and the consequences
on biodiversity, is a daunting data undertaking.
Bloomberg has a vast network of supply chain relationships
and geospatial data to show whether sustainability claims made
on the sourcing of raw materials can be verified. Bloomberg has
also partnered with the Natural History Museum to provide a
time series of ecosystem health. When mapping that dataset to
Bloomberg’s 1.1 million physical assets, we can demonstrate the
positive or negative impact on ecosystem health.
Above all, to maximise sustainability outcomes, firms need
information they can trust.
For more information, see: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/
products/data/enterprise-catalog/esg/
www.environmental-finance.com
Addressing an evolving ESG data
market: Innovations at Sustainable Fitch
ESG data provision, analysis and regulation are rapidly evolving. Gianluca Spinetti and Marina Petroleka
explain how Sustainable Fitch is innovating in response
Environmental Finance: What
information are investors in today’s
labelled bond market looking for?
Gianluca Spinetti: It’s a very dynamic market,
with new themes, labels and information
emerging every day. We analyse labelled debt
instruments and their issuers, aiming to create
standardisation and transparency and provide
additional, decision-useful information, such
as post-issuance impact metrics. Gianluca Spinetti
Labelled bond investors are very keen to
achieve impact through their investments. We
track the impacts delivered by each bond and every use of proceeds
within each bond. That involves some standardisation: for example,
there are different ways of calculating avoided emissions, some of
which are debatable. We provide standardisation on that front.
We also track the progress companies are making towards meeting
targets in sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs). We are also working on
a set of metrics to track principal adverse indicators (PAI), focusing
on private markets, where there is less transparency, and which will
complement our ESG Scores for leveraged finance.
EF: How important are accurate and up-to-date scores and
ratings for investors?
GS: Our assessments are guided by human insight. We have a large
group of analysts around the world who – helped by technology
– analyse every single transaction, and every entity, following a
process of review and verification that cuts through the noise and the
information to provide products that are accurate, well informed and
respected by our clients.
Marina Petroleka: An example is how we assess EU Taxonomy
alignment in our ESG ratings. We look at how every single use of
proceeds meets the three benchmarks of EU Taxonomy alignment:
the substantial contribution criteria, minimum safeguards and do no
significant harm criteria. That is a very rigorous and detailed process.
As far as I know, it’s unrivalled in the market.
Also, when we examine use of proceeds or the progress SLB
issuers are making towards their targets, we start with framework-
level information, but then move to subsequent impact allocation
reports to ensure both that we have the most up-to-date information.
EF: How are ESG rating methodologies evolving as more
reliable data sources become available?
GS: Certainly, there is a greater volume of source information on
which to build ESG ratings, as investors have engaged with companies
to disclose more data, and as regulators, particularly in the EU, have
pushed in the same direction.
There is also more regulation on ESG data providers, aimed to
www.environmental-finance.com
increasing transparency in terms of how ESG
ratings are arrived at, and clarity in terms of
what they set out to do. At Sustainable Fitch,
we focus on rating the impact entities and their
instruments have on the environment, society
and the effectiveness of their governance.
Transparency is at the heart of what we do, and
therefore, more publicly available information
from issuers on impact metrics will help
Marina Petroleka us refine our assessment, for the benefit of
investors.
EF: What is Fitch doing to help investors navigate global
taxonomies and the developing regulatory environment?
MP: Our ESG Regulatory Tracker tool is delivered quarterly, in
Excel, alongside an accompanying report from the research team
that analyses the latest developments in taxonomies, sustainability
disclosure and ESG-related regulation. Sustainability-related
regulations are a core part of our thematic research and analysis,
aiming to help investors and issuers understand and navigate this
fast-evolving segment of the market.
GS: We already provide analysis of EU Taxonomy alignment for
all use-of-proceeds bonds. We are also expanding our assessment
specifically for SPOs to some Latin American taxonomies, initially
Mexico’s, as well as the recently released Hong Kong taxonomy.
So far, major taxonomies have similar conceptual structures, with
technical screening and the do no significant harm criteria, so we are
able to apply our expertise and our analysis for these new taxonomies
effectively.
EF:What innovations at Sustainable Fitch would you point to
that will help drive better outcomes for investors and issuers?
MP: In addition to the Regulatory Tracker and our impact dataset,
we have also introduced a transition assessment that we believe is
unique in the market. It aims to provide a nuanced view of companies
in hard-to-abate sectors, starting in energy, to enable investors to
position, differentiate and benchmark them as they transition from
carbon intensive to net zero.
GS: We have also launched our own disclosure tool to help companies
report ESG data to their stakeholders. It allows them to centralise the
data they collect into one tool, and provide responses to the various
– often overlapping – ESG information requests. It’s also attractive
to banks and investors, as it allows them to collect ESG data in the
same format across their portfolios. It’s a way to increase efficiency
and transparency.
Marina Petroleka is global head of research, and Gianluca Spinetti is
global head of analytics, at Sustainable Fitch in London
For more information, see: www.sustainablefitch.com
21
Transforming investment strategies
with geospatial intelligence
Lisa Eichler, head of physical risk & nature solutions at MSCI, considers how location-based intelligence
and geospatial data is playing a crucial role in risk management
Environmental Finance: Why has
location-based intelligence become so
important for investors and lenders?
Lisa Eichler: Location-based intelligence is
becoming a game-changer for investors and
lenders, and it’s easy to see why. Investors
often focus on companies, but the underlying
risk lies at the location level. Understanding
local impacts is crucial for accurate risk
assessment and effective resilience strategies.
Geospatial intelligence of where a company
operates is becoming more essential than Lisa Eichler, head of physical risk
ever. Imagine being able to pinpoint exactly & nature solutions
where potential risks and opportunities lie,
down to the very coordinates. This kind of precision allows for a
much more nuanced understanding of investments and lending .
For instance, knowing that a property is in a flood-prone area or
that a factory is near a protected natural habitat can significantly
influence decision-making. It’s not just about mitigating risks; it’s
also about identifying opportunities for sustainable investments.
With the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and
the growing importance of environmental sustainability, having
detailed geospatial data at your fingertips is expected to become
even more invaluable in the future. It should help investors and
lenders make more informed, responsible, and ultimately profitable
decisions.
EF: What are the challenges around gathering and collating
location-based data?
LE: Gathering and collating geospatial data involves many complex
challenges and hurdles, which can be broadly categorised into data
volume, data quality, technical, and operational challenges.
First off, the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming. We are
talking about satellite imagery, geocoding of company addresses,
climate models, topographical maps, and more—all of which need
to be integrated, cleaned, and analysed. At the same time, achieving
comprehensive coverage on a specific aspect, say collecting all asset
locations for a specific company, can also be difficult.
Then, there is the issue of data quality and accuracy. Not all
data sources are created equal and ensuring that the information
is reliable is crucial. Verifying data from multiple sources to ensure
consistency and accuracy can be complex and time-consuming.
Collecting and maintaining high-quality geospatial data can be
expensive. Specialised knowledge and skills are required to collect,
process, and analyse geospatial data effectively. Navigating the
legal and ethical considerations around data collection can also be
complex, especially in different jurisdictions.
Finally, there is the technical aspect of it all. Combining data
22
from different sources and formats into a
cohesive dataset requires sophisticated data
integration techniques.
These challenges highlight the need for
robust methodologies, advanced technologies,
and skilled professionals to effectively gather,
collate, and utilise geospatial data.
EF: How has MSCI responded?
LE: We developed our proprietary asset
location dataset years ago as the base layer for
enabling our physical risk and biodiversity
analysis. To generate detailed and accurate
physical risk exposure and financial impact
data, we needed to know where a company’s physical assets are
located, what activity is being done at the site, and other attributes
about the asset and its surroundings. As the market asked for
more granular asset-level data to access drill-down insights from
portfolios or loan books to corporates and all the way down to
individual asset locations, we decided to support our clients and
deliver our issuer-linked asset location dataset for clients to use.
This saves them the time and effort to go through the tedious,
challenging, and expensive data collection process themselves.
EF: How can the MSCI GeoSpatial solution help clients?
LE: MSCI GeoSpatial Asset Intelligence offers an extensive
solution for understanding location-based risks and opportunities
across investor portfolios or loan books. By providing continuously
expanding access to global location-based data for around 70,000
public and private companies plus additional coverage for corporate
and real estate assets, on request, for total portfolio coverage, MSCI
GeoSpatial Asset Intelligence is designed to enable investors and
lenders explore location-specific exposure to physical hazards and
nature risks. This data is crucial for quantifying the financial impact
of physical risk and for uncovering climate-resilient opportunities.
For risk managers and sustainability officers who need to
understand where their portfolio or loan book’s assets are located
and their relationship to climate hazards and nature-related
risks, MSCI GeoSpatial Asset Intelligence helps them align
with regulation and integrate asset-level risks into their financial
frameworks. Our datasets are delivered flexibly for on-premise
integration into clients’ own data lakes and financial models.
MSCI’s solution has been developed by leveraging our
experience in climate change and geospatial engineering, climate
expertise, rigorous data collection, and innovative partnerships
with Fathom (now part of Swiss Re Group) and Google Cloud’s
gen AI technology.
Learn more here: MSCI GeoSpatial Asset Intelligence - MSCI
www.environmental-finance.com
 Will AI be transformative
for ESG data? (Part two)
The second part of this feature exploring how the AI revolution could transform the ESG data
landscape, looks at how AI can be used to generate actionable insights and where it will go next. Peter
Cripps reports
T
here are numerous ways in which artificial
intelligence (AI) can help generate actionable
insights to inform investment decision making.
Ashley Lester, global head of research at
ESG data provider MSCI, says AI models
can be used to identify patterns, trends, and
correlations in the diverse range of ESG data, to
compare a company’s performance on relevant
sustainability and climate issues against its peers.
For example, he says a large language modelling (LLM)
approach, can be used to “assess the scale of impact, nature of
harm and severity of a recent news event. For an asset manager,
this type of assessment can enable measuring portfolio companies’
reputational risks for better investment decisions.”
For Stuart Forbes, head of ARK Invest Europe, the most obvious
application of AI is “comparing the data reported by companies
and assessing companies against each other to generate actionable
insights”.
“AI would be able to generate whatever report you like by the
simple entry of a prompt,” he says. “It will be a game changer
23
in terms of comparing companies and assessing their status and
progress in terms of resource efficiency, emissions, effectiveness of
initiatives adopted etc., which are very useful indicators of value,
and will become even more so.
“For example, being able to compare two recycling companies
by reference to their consumption of energy and water, relative to
the amount of recycled material they produce will be hugely useful
indicators of relative resource efficiency, the scalability of their
services, the quality of management and, ultimately, their value.”
As discussed in part one of this feature, AI will allow a greater
volume of data to be processed at greater speeds.
Some investors are already making use of AI to aid their
investment decision making. For example, BlackRock uses AI
to help analyse unconventional ESG data sources. The asset
management giant told Environmental Finance’s The Future of
ESG Data conference in London that it was underweight Silicon
Valley Bank (SVB), before its collapse in March 2023, following
AI-powered analysis.
BlackRock systematic factors, sustainable and solutions head
Andrew Ang said the $237 billion data-driven investment unit
www.environmental-finance.com
of BlackRock analysed customer complaints data provided by
the US Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), which it
scrapes every day using machine-learning techniques: “It turned
out Silicon Valley Bank had an inordinate number of complaints
[compared with] some of its peers. We had an underweight position
in Silicon Valley Bank as a result of this signal.”
Chandini Jain, CEO of ESG data provider Auquan, adds that
AI tools can be used to generate an impact profile of a company
based on its business model, revenue breakup, and products and
services, “which can help us understand whether this company is
beneficial or harmful to the environment or the society and which
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) it advances”.
“Without AI, firms must manually maintain a static mapping
between what the companies disclose as their revenue activities and
SDGs. Such static lists require exact matches between disclosed
business activities and SDGs — missing any activities not explicitly
listed.”
The main ramification of this, she believes, is that AI could
help to “make greenwashing a thing of the past, as investment
and ESG teams will have all of the data they need on each of the
companies they’re watching and will be aware of any development
the moment it happens”. “Companies have been able to get
“Companies have been able to get away with greenwashing
because they’ve long held an information advantage over investors,
away with greenwashing because
customers and governments. AI levels the information playing they’ve long held an information
field, empowering financial services teams to generate a check on
the information they get from companies themselves.” advantage over investors, customers
Stuart Cullinan, chief technology officer at MainStreet Partners,
agrees: “Parsing online media en masse, AI is also able to identify
and governments. AI levels the
and detect controversial behaviour or activities by companies information playing field”
that may not always hit mainstream media headlines, and this
ensures that more companies are held to account regardless of Chandini Jain, Auquan
their prominence.”

GenAI really is just the beginning.”

Some of the biggest excitement surrounds ‘generative AI’,
defined by Chat GPT as AI that has the capability to generate
new content, such as images, text, audio, or even entire virtual
environments, that is not directly copied from existing data. (See
box in previous feature for descriptions of different types of AI,
according to ChatGPT.)
Forbes at ARK Invest points to ChatGPT as an example of
what generative AI can achieve: “ChatGPT is quite frankly, a
game changer. It can replace mundane, time consuming and low
value administrative tasks, thus freeing up human capital to work
on higher value, qualitative items. For example, if you need to
produce a 500-word summary of a lengthy sustainability report
you wrote, you can ask ChatGPT to do that in seconds, which you
are then able to assess the quality of and tweak where necessary.
“Another example would be where you pose ESG questions
to a company which directs you to their published sustainability
reports to find the answers yourself. With tools like GPT, you
could enter your questions into the chat and ask it to review
the relevant report and answer the questions for you, citing the
relevant sections and page numbers of the report and inserting
supporting quotes.
“Thus, it is far quicker for you to whittle down the questions you
have and re-engage with the company with a shortlist of questions
that were not answerable by reference to the published report. It
Ryan Roser, head of AI and machine learning at FactSet, which
owns ESG data provider Truvalue Labs (TVL) and offers a set of
AI-backed products, says: “One of the challenges with ESG data
is lack of standardisation of metrics and inconsistent reporting.
ESG data providers, [including] FactSet, have helped provide
company-reported information. Now under generative AI, we are
seeing an increase in the number of applications it can be used for.
“GenAI is an AI application that allows for easier use of text
data through underlying, previously trained LLM,” he explains.
“Also, the models can generate text responses in a free-form way
in response to a query.”
TVL uses AI and machine learning to process millions of
documents, pulling in ESG events from public news and scoring
sentiment on those events.
FactSet earlier this year launched a conversational ESG tool,
Transcript Assistant – a chatbot that accelerates in-depth research
and analysis of earnings call transcripts, which allows investors to
ask questions of datasets.
Roser adds: “The AI space has evolved tremendously over the
past few years. FactSet has seen the emergence of large language
models as a differentiator. Generative AI products have resulted in
substantial improvements to our ability to work with text and data.
“It is helping produce a more conversational experience. For
example, if you are looking to jump into a company you are

24 www.environmental-finance.com

“Humans need to move from being
‘in the loop’ to being ‘in the lead’,
as ESG data moves up through the
chain of information and informs
investment decisions”
Lorenzo Saa, ClarityAI
covering, you can ask: ‘Please summarise or list ESG-related topics
in an earnings call’ – and Transcript Assistant could summarise.
It’s quite accurate.
“The exciting part of generative AI is the ability to have these
conversational experiences,” he adds.
Clarity AI also plans to launch such a tool in coming months,
says Saa: “We will launch an AI assistant this quarter. It will allow
people to ask questions of our data and talk to their portfolio.”
And Sustainalytics said it last year developed its own LLM,
called ESGPT. It describes this as a LLM for information retrieval
and inference from sustainability disclosures. It said owning the
model allows it to minimise hallucinations and inaccuracies that
general GPT models would produce when answering industry-
specific questions.
However, its paper on AI sounded a note of caution on the
technology, warning that generative AI models are “on the slippery
slope, where they are appear to be good enough to solve most
task[s] thrown at them, but are not – e.g. due to a lacking notion
of factuality”.
It said that, to overcome this, Sustainalytics “experiments with
knowledge injection by training large-scale knowledge graphs on
Wikipedia articles”.
Keep the human in the loop
Although AI is becoming increasingly powerful and accurate,
there will still be the need for human factchecking and oversight.
25
FactSet’s Roser says the ability to check on the AI-generated
information is an important aspect of its products.
“One of the challenges is the rate of development in the AI
space,” he says. “There’s a great amount of experimentation.
“We care deeply about data integrity. We ground AI in facts and
provide paper trails and auditability to ensure the [outputs] are
trustworthy. Clients can click through and verify answers and do
their own checks.
“He points out that generative AI can produce errors, known as
hallucinations, adding: “The ‘human in the loop’ remains part of
the story here.”
These hallucinations were also acknowledged in a paper from
the Bank of International Settlements, which found that AI could
be used to help parse ESG data at scale, but the hallucinations
posed a significant issue.
Saa at ClarityAI says if an item of ESG data doesn’t make sense
it is checked by a sustainability specialist.
He adds that humans need to move from being “in the loop”
to being “in the lead”, as ESG data moves up through the chain
of information and informs investment decisions. The pyramid of
knowledge, as Saa describes it, moves from raw data at bottom, to
insights, then wisdom, with action at the top.
He argues the data should be used to help a portfolio manager
make a decision but not take over from them.
However, he points out that as well as introducing errors, AI
has the potential to spot them, helping to remove anomalies in
ESG data. He cites ClarityAI’s research that looked at data from
different data providers and found 13% of data points showed
more than 20% discrepancy.
In some cases, these were created by human error, as analysts
had input data incorrectly or had failed to include subsidiaries or
joint ventures.
He claims that ClarityAI’s data is 99% accurate, thanks to the
‘reliability models’ it has built.
And he argues that AI, if well designed, can help to eliminate
biases, although he acknowledges this is “a big challenge for our
industry”.
And Auquan’s Jain is optimistic that the hallucination issue
can be resolved: “While enterprises are still quite cautious about
the infamous ‘hallucination’ issue with LLMs, a process called
retrieval augmented generation (RAG) provides a way for LLMs
to access and leverage relevant external data, improving the
accuracy and grounding of their outputs.
“RAG practically eliminates the hallucination issue, and it
represents a breakthrough for knowledge-intensive financial
services use cases, particularly ESG.”
But MSCI’s Lester adds that the role of humans will remain
key. “Even five years from now, humans will still ultimately
be responsible for investments. They will need to understand
their investments, and they will need sensible ideas and theories
about the connection between data on the one hand and impact
or financial materiality on the other. In fact, transparency, fact-
checking, theories and common-sense will all become even more
important than they are today, because there will be so much more
data available than at present.”
And the Sustainalytics whitepaper on AI argues that introducing
AI into the industry will require robust governance frameworks, to
help address the “interpretability, factuality and the potential for
unintended consequences”.
www.environmental-finance.com
The financial sector needs more granular
and accurate climate and biodiversity data
Virginie Wauquiez, chief executive officer of Carbon4 Finance, explains how it leverages its 17 years of
environmental expertise to provide critical climate and biodiversity methodologies and data to support
sustainable finance for a more sustainable global economy.
Environmental Finance: Why is it important
to have specialist data providers when
dealing with climate and biodiversity?
Virginie Wauquiez: The demands of regulators,
supervisors and investors have increased
considerably in recent years, leading financial
players to give priority to the most scientifically
robust approaches and access to the most granular
data. Virginie Wauquiez
Aggregate ESG ratings have shown their
limitations, since they mix measures of different nature for an
aggregate result that is difficult to interpret. Hence the need to get
specific assessments on climate transition risk, physical risks, or
biodiversity impact and dependencies.
The financial sector is therefore currently facing two challenges:
• Measure what really matters: each sector has its own role to play.
The same metrics or methodology cannot be used to measure the
climate risk of a food company or an oil and gas company.
Furthermore, certain sectors such as ICT (4% of global GHG
emissions) have long been underestimated. At Carbon4 Finance,
we have developed over 75 different sector modules for measuring
transition risks for corporate bonds, equities and loans, as well as
sovereign and green instruments, with relevant scenarios, metrics
and targets, while ensuring consistency and comparability of
methodologies.
• Critically review and remodel the data reported by companies
Scope 3 emissions represent more than 80% of total GHG
emissions, but only 45% of listed companies disclose it, and only 20%
cover the most material categories. Some regulations (e.g. the CSRD)
will facilitate access to reported data, but will not impose a minimum
coverage for significant emission items, thus not guaranteeing the
comparability of companies, even within the same sector. This is why
we are systemically recalculating emissions and comparing them with
reported emissions.
EF: What is the Carbon4 Finance differentiating factor
highlighted by your customers?
VW: In addition to the accuracy and robustness of our scientific
approach, our clients particularly appreciate the transparency and
support we provide.
Financial institutions must comply with demanding regulatory
requirements and assume their share of responsibility for climate
mitigation and adaptation, or the protection of natural capital. All
decision-making must be transparent and robust. At Carbon4
Finance, all our methodologies are openly available on our public
website. Our clients have direct and unlimited access to the research
team and sector experts, and our platform easily provides additional
information to explain the data, its construction or the specific
26
challenges and levers for each sector. This is one of
our key strengths, and one that many of our long-
standing customers have been emphasising for the
past eight years.
EF: How has your expertise been built up and
what is the role of innovation and research?
VW: The Carbone 4 group was founded 17 years
ago by Alain Grandjean and Jean-Marc Jancovici,
the latter being at the origin of the first carbon
footprint methodology in 2000 which inspired the GHG Protocol.
Over the past 17 years, the group has distinguished itself as an
innovative leader in environmental issues through:
• carrying out thousands of carbon footprint assessments and
developed a proprietary emission factors library;
• advising hundreds of companies and countries on their climate
and biodiversity strategies;
• creating recognised open-source methodologies such as the Net
Zero Initiative in partnership with the World Business Council
Sustainable Development; and,
• launching new collaborative initiatives such as IF which aims to
develop new forward-looking scenarios that take into account the
planet’s limits (raw materials, metals, land, competing uses).
Carbon4 Finance harnesses all this expertise within its three databases
on climate transition risk, physical risks and biodiversity assessment.
For example, we are able to recalculate induced and avoided, Scope
1, 2 and 3 emissions for more than 42,000 entities.
Research and innovation are in the group’s DNA, and we are
constantly investing in the development of new methodologies and
the improvement of our existing ones.
EF: How do you measure avoided emissions, sometimes
called ‘Scope 4’ and why are they important?
VW: Avoided emissions are a key aspect of our analysis, which we
have included in our assessment methods since 2016.
Avoided emissions refer to the “positive” contribution a solution
may provide to the climate mitigation when comparing the GHG
impact of a solution to a reference situation or scenario. For example,
avoided emissions can be attributed to a manufacturer of insulation
that will help reduce the energy used to heat or cool buildings, or a
manufacturer of electric bicycles that will enable a mode shift from
thermal cars to bicycles.
Assessing a company’s climate performance on the basis of its
induced emissions alone is simplistic and does not encompass all the
aspects of the transition.This is why our transition risk rating takes into
account this metric, as well as a dynamic analysis of the past, present
and future performances, including a critical review of any transition
plan, to provide a holistic view of its transition risks and impacts.
www.environmental-finance.com
 It says it is trying to address the two big issues facing the
technology, which are “the black-box character of its models
and the hallucination issue of LLMs”, and is working on a paper
introducing a set of ethical AI standards for ESG.

Where next?
Auquan’s Jain points out that AI is evolving at “breakneck pace”,
making predicting it impossible.
“But it’s a safe bet to assume that in five years, AI will be fully
integrated in all repetitive financial services workflows, having
automated all manual data tasks which don’t require human
oversight,” she opines.
Mainstreet’s Cullinan adds: “In the past two to three years, AI
technology has experienced a significant surge in advancement.
The emergence of large language models, multimodal models, and
agentic AI has revolutionized various industries and workflows.
“However, it’s important to note that we are still in the early
stages of this AI wave, and there remain challenges and limitations
to address. While AI capabilities have undoubtedly improved,
there is still room for growth and refinement, particularly in areas
such as ethics, bias mitigation, and interpretability.”
“While AI capabilities have improved,
ClarityAI’s Saa also sounds a note of caution. He points out that there is still room for growth and
the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos “was all about AI”.
Despite the hype, he argues that AI “is not a panacea”. refinement, particularly in areas
“AI is a means and not an end. AI has a lot of potential but start
with solving what you are trying to solve [and] see where it fits.”
such as ethics, bias mitigation, and
He says AI can help process the deluge of ESG data, and so interpretability”
“AI has the capability to make the problem of ‘too much data’ go
away”. Stuart Cullinan, MainStreet Partners
But he adds that “understanding risk of bias is critical”.
And he adds that there is a growing set of initiatives, such as the
Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU), which is attempting to MSCI’s Lester also sees AI as part of an evolving ESG data
build a free-to-use platform to house climate data. landscape – a part of the solution but not alone the solution. He
“NZDPU is trying to build a single source of truth. If they predicts that AI will “expand the frontiers of sustainability data, so
succeed and have a value to society, the amount of pain points [in that we can capture more of these aspects of company operations”.
the ESG data landscape] should go down ... and there will not be But at the same time the data reported by companies will also
so much need for AI.” improve. “We can confidently say that in five years’ time, all
In this scenario the use case for AI will change. It is currently investors will have far better data available to them on which to
most useful at the bottom of the knowledge pyramid – in collecting base their investment decisions.”
raw data – he argues. But as technology evolves it will move up the This topic will be explored at Environmental Finance’s
value chain, and the question will become: “Where does AI stop conference on sustainability data in London on 17 October. For
and humans pick up?” more details see here.

Hey ChatGPT, will AI prove transformative for ESG data?

Environmental Finance: Can AI be transformative for ESG
data?
ChatGPT: Absolutely, AI can be transformative for ESG
(Environmental, Social, and Governance) data in several ways:
1. Data Collection and Analysis: AI can sift through vast amounts
of data from various sources, including news articles, social
media, financial reports, satellite imagery, and sensor data, to
gather ESG-related information. Natural Language Processing
(NLP) techniques enable AI to understand unstructured data
and extract relevant insights, such as identifying trends in
environmental impact, labor practices, or corporate governance.
2. Accuracy and Automation: AI algorithms can enhance the
accuracy of ESG data by automating data collection, verification,
and reporting processes. This reduces the potential for human
error and ensures more reliable and consistent ESG metrics.
For instance, machine learning algorithms can detect anomalies
or inconsistencies in ESG reporting, flagging areas for further
investigation.
3. Predictive Analytics: AI can leverage historical ESG data to make
predictions about future performance and risks. By analyzing
patterns and correlations, AI models can forecast potential
environmental risks, social controversies, or governance issues
that may affect a company’s sustainability efforts or investment
prospects. This helps investors and businesses make more
informed decisions.

27 www.environmental-finance.com
Seizing the opportunities in climate data
Climate data availability and accuracy is improving, offering growing insights into the investment opportunity
presented by the climate transition – with digitalisation promising a revolution, says LSEG’s Elena Philipova
Environmental Finance: What
challenges are your clients facing in
addressing climate-related risks and
opportunities?
Elena Philipova: The good news is that
climate data is one of the more mature
thematics within sustainable finance: data
availability and understanding of what data
needs to be measured, managed and reported
has improved significantly. However, we’re
far from having complete datasets.
We see a lot more data on Scope 1 and 2
emissions, and we have a lot more historical Elena Philipova
data too, so users of our data can backtest
investment strategies and monitor performance over time. But we
all know of the growing importance of Scope 3 emissions data, and
the huge challenges companies face when measuring and reporting
on it. Some of our recent research found that while 45% of large
and medium-sized listed companies disclose Scope 3 data, less
than half of them cover the most material categories for their sector.
Disclosure rates also remain volatile, with over a third of disclosed
values varying at least 50% year on year and half varying at least
20%.
EF: What can be done to improve climate data quality and
coverage?
EP: The quality of climate investment strategies, and the models
used by investors to manage climate-related risks, impacts and
opportunities, depends on the quality of the reported data.
What we can do, as data providers, is ensure quality control
and validate reported data, engage with companies, regulators
and standard setters to accelerate interoperability and availability
of climate data, and fill gaps with reliable estimated data. We as
an industry need to be very careful when producing and using
estimated data which can significantly deviate from actual figures,
disincentivise companies to report and even increase the risk of
greenwashing.
At LSEG, we believe that regulators and standard setters have
an important role to play. We have called for the adoption of the
International Sustainability Standards Board’s reporting standards,
to create a common global baseline of high-quality data, minimising
cross-jurisdictional information asymmetries.
EF: Where do you see opportunities in climate data?
EP: We see an overemphasis on managing climate risks, when
actually the transition to net zero is creating huge opportunities
across the economy. Climate data can be used to inform new
differentiated investment strategies and alpha generating
opportunities. Data sets like our Green Revenues model allow
investors to see how companies are unlocking potential for their
businesses.
More ESG data is also emerging as a result of regulation.
28
For example, the EU Taxonomy requires
companies to publish not only taxonomy-
aligned revenues but also capex and opex.
The combination of these inputs allows
investors to project how much of a company’s
revenue from the green economy is likely to
grow over time.
The digitalisation of sustainability
disclosures and climate reporting, meanwhile,
will revolutionise the whole industry and
bring it on par with more traditional financial
datasets. Introducing digital tagging of
ESG data would dramatically improve
its availability, quality and comparability,
meaning that it could be processed and available to analysts within
minutes of publication. That would allow the data to become a core
mainstream input into investing and financing decision making.
EF: What is LSEG doing to help clients with their climate
data needs?
EP: We’ve been supporting clients with ESG and climate data for
more than 20 years. While many in the industry see the process of
measuring and factoring in climate-related risks and opportunities
as complicated, we believe the enabler to broad adoption is
simplification.
As an example, we have close to 1,000 climate-related data
points for companies in our coverage universe. There’s a sea of
climate data. But when you think about assessing how the climate
transition is impacting businesses and how to manage the risks
and unlock the business opportunities, one can summarise the key
factors across three dimensions: a company’s climate ambition, its
management, and its actual emissions performance. Moreover,
you really can have one data point for each dimension to provide
an easy-to-understand and comparable way of measuring how
well companies are preparing for the transition to a low-carbon
economy. This allows us to structure the process and produce a
meaningful and actionable data set to empower clients to act on
climate opportunities with confidence.
This year we also launched the Sustainability Intelligence solution,
which won ‘ESG data initiative of the year’ at Environmental
Finance’s Sustainable Investment Awards 2024. It allows users
to build and visualise a comprehensive view of Scope 1, 2 and 3
emissions, identify hotspots in their value chain and engage with
high-emitting suppliers to gather more accurate data and support
decarbonisation efforts.
This work is simplifying climate data in a way that helps businesses
and investors act on the information available to them. The best way
to help companies navigate the complexity of the climate transition
and drive sustainable growth is to simplify the concepts and the data.
Elena Philipova is director of sustainable finance at LSEG based in
Zurich, Switzerland
https://lseg.group/disclaimer
www.environmental-finance.com
 4. Portfolio Optimization: AI-powered ESG analysis can help
investors build and manage more sustainable portfolios. By
integrating ESG criteria into investment strategies, AI algorithms
can identify companies that align with specific sustainability
goals or values. This not only promotes responsible investing
but also mitigates risks associated with ESG factors, potentially
leading to better long-term financial returns.
5. Transparency and Accountability: AI can contribute to greater
transparency and accountability in ESG reporting. By providing
stakeholders with access to comprehensive and standardized
ESG data, AI-driven platforms can facilitate better communication
between companies, investors, regulators, and the public. This
fosters trust and encourages companies to improve their ESG
performance over time.
6. Scenario Analysis and Stress Testing: AI can simulate various
scenarios and conduct stress tests to assess the potential impact
of ESG-related events on businesses and financial markets.
By modeling different environmental, social, and governance
scenarios, AI helps stakeholders understand the implications of
climate change, social unrest, regulatory changes, or other ESG-
related risks on investment portfolios and corporate strategies.
Overall, AI has the potential to revolutionize the way ESG data
is collected, analyzed, and utilized, ultimately driving greater
transparency, sustainability, and accountability across industries
and financial markets.
EF: How can AI be used to generate and assess ESG data?
ChatGPT: AI can be used to generate and assess ESG
(Environmental, Social, and Governance) data through various
techniques and applications:
1. Natural Language Processing (NLP): AI-powered NLP
algorithms can scan vast amounts of unstructured data from
sources such as news articles, social media, corporate reports,
and regulatory filings to extract ESG-related information. NLP
enables the categorization and analysis of text data, allowing AI
systems to identify mentions of environmental initiatives, social
controversies, governance practices, and other relevant factors.
2. Data Mining and Web Scraping: AI can automatically gather
ESG data from diverse online sources, including company
websites, sustainability reports, government databases, and
academic publications. Through web scraping techniques, AI
algorithms can extract structured data, such as key performance
indicators (KPIs), carbon emissions data, diversity metrics, and
corporate governance information, for analysis and evaluation.
3. Image Recognition and Satellite Imagery Analysis: AI-driven
image recognition and satellite imagery analysis can assess
environmental factors, such as deforestation, air and water
quality, and land use changes. By analyzing satellite images
and aerial photographs, AI can detect environmental risks,
monitor habitat destruction, track changes in carbon stocks, and
evaluate the impact of climate-related events on ecosystems.
4. Sensor Data Analytics: AI can analyze data from IoT (Internet of
Things) sensors deployed in various locations, such as factories,
buildings, and vehicles, to assess environmental performance
and resource utilization. Sensor data analytics enable real-time
monitoring of energy consumption, waste generation, emissions
levels, and other environmental indicators, allowing companies
to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements and
emissions reductions.
5. Social Media Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis: AI-powered
social media monitoring tools can track discussions, trends, and
sentiments related to ESG issues across social media platforms.
By analyzing user-generated content, comments, and hashtags,
AI algorithms can gauge public perception, identify emerging
social concerns, and assess stakeholder engagement with ESG
topics.
6. Machine Learning Models for ESG Evaluation: AI can
employ machine learning models to evaluate companies’ ESG
29
performance based on historical data and predefined criteria.
By training algorithms on labeled datasets of ESG attributes and
outcomes, machine learning models can predict companies’
ESG ratings, scores, or rankings, helping investors and analysts
assess sustainability risks and opportunities in investment
portfolios.
7. Blockchain for ESG Data Transparency: AI can leverage
blockchain technology to enhance the transparency and
integrity of ESG data. By recording ESG-related transactions
and disclosures on a decentralized ledger, blockchain enables
secure and tamper-resistant data sharing among stakeholders.
AI algorithms can analyze blockchain data to verify the
authenticity of ESG reports, track supply chain traceability, and
ensure compliance with sustainability standards.
By leveraging these AI-driven techniques and applications,
organizations can generate, analyze, and assess ESG data more
efficiently and effectively, enabling better-informed decision-
making, improved risk management, and enhanced sustainability
performance.
EF: What will be the next key advances in the use of AI in ESG
data?
ChatGPT: The next key advances in the use of AI in ESG
(Environmental, Social, and Governance) data are likely to focus on
the following areas:
1. Enhanced Data Integration and Standardization: One of the
main challenges in ESG data analysis is the lack of standardized
metrics and inconsistent reporting practices across companies
and industries. Advanced AI techniques, such as federated
learning and knowledge graphs, can help integrate disparate
sources of ESG data and harmonize diverse reporting formats.
By standardizing ESG metrics and taxonomy, AI-driven platforms
can facilitate more accurate and comparable assessments of
companies’ sustainability performance.
2. Explainable AI for ESG Decision-Making: As AI models become
more complex and influential in ESG decision-making processes,
there is a growing need for transparency and interpretability.
Explainable AI techniques, such as feature importance analysis,
model visualization, and natural language explanations, can
help stakeholders understand how AI algorithms arrive at ESG-
related predictions and recommendations. This promotes trust,
accountability, and responsible use of AI in ESG analysis and
decision-making.
3. Real-Time ESG Monitoring and Alerts: AI-powered monitoring
systems can provide real-time insights into companies’ ESG
performance and risks, enabling proactive risk management
and decision-making. By analyzing streaming data from various
sources, such as social media, news feeds, sensor networks,
and financial markets, AI algorithms can detect emerging
ESG issues, regulatory changes, and stakeholder concerns.
Automated alerts and notifications can inform investors,
managers, and policymakers about potential ESG-related risks
and opportunities as they unfold.
4. Predictive Analytics for Long-Term ESG Trends: AI can
leverage predictive analytics to forecast long-term trends and
scenarios related to environmental, social, and governance
factors. By analyzing historical data and external indicators, AI
models can project future developments, such as climate change
impacts, demographic shifts, technological disruptions, and
regulatory trends. Predictive analytics enable stakeholders to
anticipate ESG-related risks and opportunities, adapt strategies
accordingly, and enhance resilience to future challenges.
5. AI-driven Impact Measurement and Attribution: AI can play
a crucial role in measuring and attributing the impact of ESG
initiatives and investments. Advanced analytics techniques,
such as causal inference and counterfactual analysis, can assess
the causal relationships between ESG actions and outcomes,
quantify the social and environmental benefits generated,
www.environmental-finance.com
 and attribute impact to specific interventions or investments.
AI-driven impact measurement enhances accountability,
transparency, and effectiveness in ESG investing and corporate
sustainability efforts.
6. Ethical AI Governance and Bias Mitigation: As AI systems
become increasingly integrated into ESG decision-making
processes, there is a growing need to address ethical
considerations, such as fairness, accountability, and bias
mitigation. Ethical AI governance frameworks, including fairness-
aware algorithms, bias detection tools, and diversity-enhancing
measures, can ensure that AI-driven ESG analysis promotes
equitable outcomes and avoids unintended consequences, such
as perpetuating social inequalities or reinforcing existing biases.
Overall, the next key advances in the use of AI in ESG data are
likely to focus on improving data integration and standardization,
enhancing transparency and interpretability, enabling real-time
monitoring and alerts, forecasting long-term trends, measuring
impact, and addressing ethical considerations. These advances
will empower stakeholders to make more informed and responsible
decisions, driving positive environmental, social, and governance
outcomes.
EF: What are the limitations of AI for ESG data?
ChatGPT: While AI holds immense potential for transforming ESG
(Environmental, Social, and Governance) data analysis, it also has
several limitations that need to be acknowledged:
1. Data Quality and Availability: AI algorithms heavily rely on data
for training and analysis. However, ESG data often suffer from
issues related to quality, consistency, and availability. Incomplete,
inaccurate, or biased data can lead to flawed insights and
decisions. Moreover, ESG data for some companies or regions
may be limited or inaccessible, hindering the effectiveness of AI-
driven analysis.
2. Biases in Data and Models: AI systems can perpetuate biases
present in the data they are trained on. ESG data, particularly
social and governance metrics, may reflect underlying societal
biases and power dynamics. If not addressed properly, AI
algorithms can reinforce or amplify these biases, leading to unfair
or discriminatory outcomes. Moreover, biases in the selection of
features and modeling assumptions can distort ESG analysis
results.
3. Interpretability and Transparency: Many AI models, especially
deep learning models, are often considered “black boxes” due
30
to their complex and opaque nature. Lack of interpretability
and transparency in AI-driven ESG analysis can undermine
stakeholders’ trust and confidence in the results. Understanding
how AI arrives at its conclusions, especially in the context of ESG
data, is crucial for ensuring accountability and making informed
decisions.
4. Contextual Understanding and Nuance: ESG factors are
inherently complex and context-dependent. AI algorithms
may struggle to capture the nuanced relationships and trade-
offs involved in ESG issues, such as the interplay between
environmental conservation, social equity, and economic
development. Without a deep understanding of the socio-
cultural, political, and economic contexts, AI-driven ESG analysis
may oversimplify or misrepresent the real-world dynamics.
5. Regulatory and Legal Compliance: The use of AI in ESG data
analysis raises various regulatory and legal concerns, particularly
regarding data privacy, security, and compliance with ESG
reporting standards. Ensuring that AI systems adhere to relevant
regulations, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
and ESG disclosure requirements, requires careful consideration
of ethical, legal, and governance frameworks.
6. Overreliance on Quantitative Metrics: AI-driven ESG
analysis often emphasizes quantitative metrics and data-driven
approaches. While quantitative indicators provide valuable
insights into ESG performance, they may not fully capture
qualitative aspects, stakeholder perceptions, or emerging risks.
Overreliance on quantitative metrics may overlook important
qualitative factors, such as corporate culture, stakeholder
engagement, and reputational risks.
7. Dynamic and Evolving Nature of ESG Issues: ESG factors are
subject to rapid changes, driven by technological advancements,
regulatory shifts, market dynamics, and societal expectations.
AI models trained on historical data may struggle to adapt to
evolving ESG trends and emerging risks. Continuous monitoring,
updating, and recalibration of AI algorithms are necessary to
ensure their relevance and effectiveness in capturing dynamic
ESG dynamics.
Addressing these limitations requires a holistic approach that
combines AI-driven analysis with human expertise, ethical
considerations, and stakeholder engagement. By leveraging AI
as a tool to augment human judgment and decision-making,
organizations can harness the transformative potential of ESG data
while mitigating its inherent challenges and risks.
www.environmental-finance.com
Solving climate, nature and sustainability data
transparency for better risk management
Girish Narula, head of sustainable finance at ICE, explains how it supports clients with data insights and
services as their climate and nature risk management processes continue to evolve
Environmental Finance: What
challenges or issues do companies face
regarding risk management?
Girish Narula: In recent years we have
seen more companies trying to incorporate
climate and nature into their risk
management processes, but sometimes lack
the data to do it.
One of the major challenges facing
the industry is the lack of trustworthy,
transparent, and credible data. This is a
particular issue for private markets, but there
are often gaps in public markets also about Girish Narula
forward-looking targets and transition plans.
One of the bigger challenges for clients
is location-based or geospatial data. Many want to know how
physical assets might be affected by climate change. And when
trying to understand the nature-related impact, the data is even
more scarce.
Another issue, from a risk management perspective, is the lack
of data and transparency for companies lower down in their supply
chains, an increasingly important area of focus for regulators and
investors.
EF: What are the benefits of improved transparency?
GN: Transparency is critical for any progress. What cannot be
measured, cannot be improved.
Hence one of the most obvious benefits of data transparency
is that investors can have more confidence in their decision
making and make better informed choices in their strategies. It
is challenging when companies use different reporting standards,
putting the onus of normalisation and standardisation of disjointed
data points on investors that very often are unable to integrate the
climate, nature and sustainability data with other financial data
or put it into their proprietary risk models. More transparency
also means investors can benchmark different companies and
understand how they perform compared with the sectors or peer
groups.
Transparency is also essential for understanding how companies
execute and implement transition plans within their business
models to match their ambitions against progress.
EF: How is ICE working with clients to improve
transparency?
GN: Our mission is to provide a comprehensive view of climate
and nature data, analytics and workflow solutions for the financial
market participants to achieve their sustainability ambitions.
We work very closely with all our clients to help them with their
31
risk management processes. For example,
one of the challenges in the market is the lack
of data in private markets. So, we have built
inference models, that have been tried and
tested over the past 10 years, that give clients
a good sense of emissions where no reported
data is available.
Another area we work very closely with
clients on is disclosure and the quality of the
publicly available data so it can be compared.
We also do a lot of work on forward-looking
data, such as science-based climate models
that are open and available publicly.
One of our solutions allows clients to
upload their portfolios so they can examine
companies’ decarbonisation and transition plans. We can show
how a company expects to decarbonise, provide a benchmark
to its peers and the sector, and evaluate whether those transition
plans are realistic based on our assessment of the data.
We also provide a lot of support around supply chains and Scope
3. We have a very granular data set that enables the evaluation of
supply chain risks, and we are going to launch that as a product
very soon. It will not only provide climate data, but also show how
it impacts a company’s profitability or the financial impacts of
these risks.
Finally, we are working with clients in the climate, nature,
sustainable and green bond space to bring more transparency and
better data quality for showing the use of proceeds and how these
bonds are used in the climate transition financing.
Our expertise in linking financial instruments across fixed
income and other asset classes with climate and nature data is
critical in helping the market participants see the holistic impact
of their decisions across the investment lifecycle.
EF: What role will data and transparency play in shaping
risk management in the future?
GN: Many clients started the risk management journey from a
climate perspective with exclusions or inclusions but have moved
on towards more closely integrated data sets for their risk models.
We believe there will be more focus on short-term risk
assessment and integrating climate into those models, as much
risk modelling is based on the long-term impact.
As carbon markets further develop and become more regulated,
we think we will see more focus on supply chain risk models
and the integration of climate and carbon pricing. And as data
becomes more reported and verifiable, you will see the integration
of this data into risk models.
www.environmental-finance.com
Bringing transparency and
granularity to sustainable debt data
Environmental Finance Data offers granular sustainable debt data via their online data platform and
API feed. Ben Smith, data strategist at Environmental Finance Data discusses how the database has
developed to more accurately capture the growing sustainable debt market
Environmental Finance: The sustainable
debt market continues to evolve in
both size and complexity. How is
Environmental Finance Data covering
sustainable bonds and loans?
Ben Smith: Environmental Finance Data
has been tracking the sustainable debt
market since its inception in 2007 and we
have evolved our database in line with the
market.
The database has 36+ interactive data
points covering labelled bonds and loans
and we produce full sustainable debt activity
pictures for issuers, borrowers, lead managers
and lenders. Our aim is to make the data as Ben Smith
digestible as possible at its most macro level
and as granular as possible at the most micro. The whole data set
is interactive and filterable by 18 different lenses including country,
label, currency, issuer type, sector, use of proceeds, SDG, and many
others.
We like to keep agile and add new data points and functionalities
constantly. We recently added new interactive charting functions to
create instant market maps and added data points to improve ESG
and greenwashing transparency such as Science Based Targets
Initiative (SBTi), improved second party opinion (SPO) coverage
and KPI verification on sustainability-linked products.
In the past few years, we have matched the growth in labels and
sub labels, with sustainability-linked and transition growing in
prominence and the emergence of blue, orange and dual labels for
bonds.
We are also keeping close tabs on regulatory developments, and
we have data points covering EU Taxonomy and EU Green Bond
Standard alignment.
EF Data is making progress in our coverage of the notoriously
opaque sustainable loan market. We have more loans, more data
points, and more lenders sending us the publicly available data than
ever before.We recently added lender roles such as MLA, bookrunner
and sustainability coordinator to more accurately portray lender
activity in the market.
EF: How do you ensure you are accurately covering the
sustainable debt market?
BS: We have a growing team of analysts who manually source,
assess, and input the data into our database. This gives us complete
confidence in our data validity.
Sustainable bond data has always been more straightforward
32
than sustainable loans when it comes to data
availability. We work hard to achieve universal
market coverage on sustainable bonds, and we
reconcile our data set with more than 30 lead
managers on a quarterly basis to ensure we
don’t miss any deals.
On the loan side of things, it is a bit more
challenging, but we are seeing progress on
what the data lenders are willing to share with
us and the granularity of the data available from
borrowers. There is still a long way to go but
our data is becoming more and more robust
and getting close to giving a more complete
picture of the sustainable loan market.
EF: What sets Environmental Finance
Data apart from other data providers?
BS: Environmental Finance Data really prides itself on market
coverage and data granularity. Our legacy data covers the debt
markets since inception to allow for full debt pictures and market
maps.
We also offer a lot of additional context and added value to the data.
Our resource library has over 20,000 documents available to assess
and download including frameworks, SPOs, and impact reports. We
regularly provide expert analysis through webinars, reports, white
papers and presentations, all freely available to subscribers.
Environmental Finance Data subscribers also enjoy access
to Environmental Finance green bond news, with daily articles,
editorials and press releases available through our news tab.
There is no better source of sustainable bond and loan data
available, we offer the most comprehensive coverage of labelled
sustainable debt market.
EF: What next for EF Data?
BS: We continue to expand our sustainable loan market coverage
and the granularity of our sustainable debt data. The next big
frontier for us is impact data.
There are over 2,000 issuer impact reports in our database resource
library, but they are mostly published in inaccessible PDF format. We
are working on extracting the data from these reports to provide them
in a more interactive format on the database.
We are encountering huge challenges around consistency and
comparability in the impact data provided but we will be rolling out
new impact data modules for the database in H2 2024.
For more information see efdata.org
www.environmental-finance.com
Keeping the analyst at
the heart of ESG analysis
Automation and AI have helped to cut the costs of ESG data collection – but there’s still no substitute for
human judgement, says Julia Haake at Ethifinance
Environmental Finance: The market for
ESG data is in flux. What is Ethifinance’s
approach to ESG data collection and
analysis?
Julia Haake: Ethifinance has been
around for 20 years, and we now have 160
employees focused on ESG and credit
ratings. We’re covering a universe of 2,300
European companies, primarily small- and
mid-caps, for which we track around 140
ESG indicators.
However, once we’ve carried out the data
collection process, we undertake dialogue with
Julia Haake
the companies we rate. This is particularly
important given our universe, as publicly
disclosed data is not so readily available for smaller companies. So
we systematically reach out to all of the rated companies, share with
them the data we’ve collected and invite them to provide additional
information. Once we have all the data collected, we undertake a
quality review, and flow the data into a model to produce our ESG
scores.
EF: What would you consider to be the appropriate balance
of automated scoring and the input of qualitative analysts?
JH: There is a tendency in the market to automate data collection
and scoring to the maximum possible to ensure the profitability of
ratings providers. This is a continuation of the trend to cut costs
by outsourcing analysis to developing countries. Everyone’s got
to look out for their business model, but we find that many clients
want to see more human analysis in the deliverables they receive.
This is important because there can be problems with the quality
of the data, whether due to errors in the datasets or to estimated data,
and ESG analysis is about more than quantitative information. It
can be about the overall feeling that an analyst gets when talking to a
company, and their ability to understand its specific business model.
We’re responding to demand from our clients with a new
methodology that we’ll be rolling out next year. First, it’s going to
be aligned with reporting required under the EU’s Corporate Social
Responsibility Directive (CSRD) and we’re adding granular sector
information. Secondly, we’re also integrating our view on the products
and services provided by the company: what is its main business
model and is it sustainable? Is it aligned with the UN Sustainable
Development Goals and the EU Taxonomy, and so on. Basically, we’ll
have a viewpoint not only on how the company manages the ESG
risks in its operations, but also what its impact is on sustainability.
www.environmental-finance.com
EF: What about how you present the
analysis of ESG performance?
JH: In addition to ESG scores, we’re
adding analyst opinions and analysis of the
sustainability performance, and explanation
of how we get to the ESG score. We will
produce qualitative analysis on various
aspects, such as the company’s climate
transition – if there’s a climate transition
plan and, if not, the targets, pathways and the
technologies chosen by companies.
EF: What about AI in that context? Do
you see a role for that in future?
JH: AI is moving very fast. If you build the
right models, and have good input data, then perhaps AI will be
of help in future. But, for now, what we’re trying to do is talk to
companies and get their specific feedback. That’s more about
human dialogue.
EF: Is regulation of corporate reporting moving fast enough,
and in the right direction?
JH: Obviously, CSRD is a big change. We’re very happy and
excited about this common standard for corporate reporting
that, eventually, 50,000 companies will be using. But, as with
many sustainable finance-related regulations, it’s very complex
and represents a cost and a burden for companies. Perhaps
the European Commission could have started with a simpler
framework, especially for companies that aren’t already reporting.
But we’re moving in the right direction.
EF: Finally, how do you see the market for ESG data evolving?
What are you focused on at Ethifinance in that regard?
JH: There’s a lot going on in the market, with technology and
AI continuing to shape the field, as will mandatory reporting
initiatives. As a result of these forces, I think we’ll see faster
evolution in this space over coming years.
In terms of what we’re focused on, we’re continuing to look for
M&A opportunities to develop on the technology side and grow
our business. But, for now, our main focus is on the evolution of
our methodology, and to continue to deliver high quality data to our
clients.
Julia Haake is Managing Director and Global Head of ESG Ratings
Agency at Ethifinance, in Paris. Email: julia.haake@ethifinance.com
For more information, see: www.ethifinance.com
33
The most comprehensive source of sustainable debt
EF Data offers unparalleled insights into the sustainable bond and loan markets with fully interactive
data set of over 30 data points per bond updated daily.

Lender roles for China common More KPI categories

loans
MORE FUNCTIONS – filter and search loans
based on MLA, bookrunner
or sustainability coordinator
ground taxonomy for greater
(CGT) granularity
– new bond standard – split GHG emissions into
scope 1, scope 1&2, scope
3 for absolute and intensity

New interactive charting

Sub labels
– 15 sub
MORE
functionality for instant market mapping categories
including blue DATA KPI details on SLBs
POINTS
and orange
bonds and SLLs
Export functionality on lead – step up/down coupon
manager and lender pages – create rate, date of observation,
your own lender and lead manager league Additional available as external verifier and
tables using filters and export straight into
excel for further manipulation
sectors search criteria frequency of step up/
down on a KPI basis

Quarterly SPO reconciliation CBI Asset classes for Law firms

with SPO providers to ensure full market certification bonds – the law firms
– including Mortgage involved in the
coverage – more granular resource type with and SBTi
SPOs separated out from other external Backed Securities (MBS), deal is now an
verified Asset Backed Securities exportable data
review documents
targets (ABS) and sukuk point

MORE DATA
MORE DOCUMENTS
More than More than Access and download over
22.5k 3.5k 22,000 bond, loan and issuer
bonds on the issuers on documents including:
database the database

More than More than

6,651 2,670
Final terms Frameworks
4.4k 2.8k
loans on the borrowers
database
4,129 2,007
SPOs Impact reports

For more information or a demonstration of these features please contact Scott Davis:
scott.davis@fieldgibsonmedia.com
www.efdata.org