Nasdaq, the tech stock exchange, has teamed up with seven specialist ESG/impact data providers for a new platform providing investors with a wide range of comparable data sets.
The Nasdaq ESG Data Hub will use ESG and impact data from Equileap (gender equality), Ecogain (biodiversity), RepRisk (reputational risk), Munich Re (climate risk), Inrate (carbon emissions), Upright Project (net impact) and Clean Tech (renewable technology).
Connecting the data sets will provide detailed and tangible intelligence on companies’ in-depth and broad ESG profile thereby supporting investors in their sustainable investment decisions.
The data platform provides investors with seamless, consolidated access to the varied data points through a single interface. All data on the portal is also connected with the UN Sustainable Development Goals in order to support transparency and global comparability.
Combining data sets
Annu Nieminen, CEO and founder of Upright Project, the Helsinki-based impact measurement company, said this partnership was in line with her company’s global ambitions and mission to make its net impact data accessible globally to investors.
“Many investors today are considering ‘skipping the ESG phase’ and moving on directly to impact data and thus being able to report and improve on things their clients most ask about,” said Nieminen.
“Concretely, investors can get our data sets from Nasdaq’s new ESG and impact data platform via Nasdaq’s interface and combine the net impact information with other non-financial and financial data,” she said.
Asset owners and asset managers globally can start to use Upright’s net impact data in their day-to-day investment decisions, development of new investment products, scenario testing and reporting, Nieminen pointed out.
Applying different lenses
The data sets also include the companies’ net impact profiles weighed by different sets of values, and seen through the lenses of e.g. millennials seeking the most interesting investment products or jobs or clients who value health-related impacts more than other categories of impact.
“This ability to see the same companies through different sets of values is seen as critically important by Upright’s asset manager and asset owner users. The one-dimensional division of companies into ‘good versus bad’ is becoming outdated thinking in the global impact and ESG discourse,” Nieminen added.
“As companies’ impact on the environment, health, society and knowledge becomes increasingly important to investors in their decision-making processes, we are excited to partner with Upright, a leading provider of intelligence used to quantify the net impact of companies,” says James McKeone, VP, Head of European Data at Nasdaq.
The Nasdaq ESG Data Hub is the latest of several ESG and impact-related services Nasdaq has launched in the past few years to help track and measure ESG impact, increase transparency in green bonds and simplify ESG reporting, to name a few.
