ESG Research and Resource Center

This infographic that breaks down six crucial factors for identifying strong and weak sustainability traits in any organization.

The sustainable finance market has seen an exponential increase in size and activity in recent years. Innovative offerings such as green, social, and sustainable bonds, green and sustainability-linked loans (SLLs), and most recently sustainability-linked bonds, have contributed to the market’s incredible growth. In 2020, boosted by varied financial needs and mainstream recognition of environmental, social and governance (ESG) parameters, global sustainable debt capital surpassed US$700 billion, a 30% increase compared to 2019. Part of this capital was channelled towards tackling the effects of COVID-19 as government agencies, supranational bodies and corporates borrowed money to support areas most affected by the pandemic, such as healthcare. This shift in fund usage in 2020 resulted in the rapid growth of social bonds and a commendable first year for sustainability-linked bonds.

Our guide, Walking the Talk: Tips for Telling Your Authentic ESG Story, offers insight on how to identify, report, and address material ESG risks.

With climate change and social justice concerns increasingly dominating headlines, environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors are no longer treated as trivial issues confined to a company’s CSR department. ESG is now central to a company’s financial performance and reputation.

In this report, we look at the potential synergies between Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings and Morningstar’s Economic Moat Rating. As a part of our research, we constructed a back-testable investment strategy and portfolio by segmenting stocks with low ESG risk and a wide moat. While both metrics worked independently, they performed exceptionally well in combination.

The ESG Risk Ratings measure the degree to which a company’s economic value is at risk driven by ESG factors or, more technically speaking, the magnitude of a company’s unmanaged ESG risks. A company’s ESG Risk Rating is comprised of a quantitative score and a risk category.

Good environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance is not just about meeting investor demands. From revenue generation and raising capital to talent acquisition and employee retention, strong corporate ESG performance can influence key aspects of a company’s operations.

NN Investment Partners (NN IP) is the asset manager of NN Group N.V., a publicly traded corporation, headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands. NN Investment Partners offers specialized SRI funds and tailor-made responsible investment solutions that meet the growing demand for products that generate good financial returns and at the same time have positive impact on society.

This four-part guide focuses on key areas of sustainable finance, offering companies, corporate investment banks and investors a better understanding of market trends and important developments.

The past 15 years, responsible investing in Australia has evolved from a fringe practice to one of the top investment trends with responsible investing assets now on the cusp of AUD 1 trillion.

Our Thematic research report, Understanding ESG Incidents: Key Lessons for Investors, provides a complete exploration of Sustainalytics’ incidents collection framework and offers comprehensive insight into company activities that generate undesirable social or environmental effects.

Aberdeen Standard Investments, Sustainalytics and the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and Environment have published “Smart Beta and ESG: Promoting sustainability in smart beta investment strategies”.

Sustainalytics´ ESG Performance Analytics provides companies with an in-depth assessment of their ESG Risk Rating compared relatively to a select number of industry peers.

A Sustainability Linked Loan is focused on incentivizing sustainability improvements among corporate borrowers by linking the terms of the loan to their overall sustainability performance targets. SLLs can be used for general corporate purposes as the terms are tied solely to the borrower’s ESG-related performance.

This four-part guide focuses on key areas of sustainable finance, offering companies, corporate investment banks and investors a better understanding of market trends and important developments.

In this report, we build on investors’ mounting interest in climate risk analysis by assessing relevant company disclosures and risk mitigation programs.

Sustainability-Linked Bonds (SLBs) are a forward-looking performance-based instrument, for which the bond’s financial or structural characteristics (such as the coupon rate) are adjusted depending on the achievement of pre-defined sustainability performance targets.

This report, How Investors are Integrating ESG: A Typology of Approaches, classifies ESG integration approaches along three dimensions: management (who is integrating ESG), research (what is being integrated), and application (how the integration is taking place). The authors then used the typology to identify six prevailing approaches of ESG integration in the market today.

Review the second-party opinions for some of the green, social and sustainability bonds mentioned in our 500th SPO post. Learn more about the issuers, and the socially and environmentally focused projects and initiatives their bonds funded.

Labour rights issues in food supply chains are crucial matters to investors, both in terms of compliance with international human rights norms and national legislation, and from the material point of view of securing future supplies. With this background, GES, in collaboration with AP7, The Seventh Swedish National Pension Fund, conducted a pre-study to provide input for the development of a new engagement initiative.