Adjacent data sets are essential to ESG portfolios
An effective ESG investment approach is not only about tracking ESG data. ESG factors in and of themselves will not provide a complete view of a company’s overall resilience.
For that, various adjacent data sets are important in gaining the clearer picture of investment viability: sanctions, T&Cs, legal hierarchy, etc.
Let’s look at credit ratings:
While ESG metrics provide insights into a company's ethical and sustainability practices, credit ratings provide valuable information about its overall financial health. Examining both data sets enable investors to gain a holistic understanding of a company's risk profile and its ability to deal with various economic, social, and environmental challenges.
If a company has strong ESG performance but a low credit rating, it may be facing financial challenges because of potential regulatory fines, lawsuits, or operational disruptions.
If, on the other hand, the company has a strong credit rating but poor ESG performance, it could be exposed to reputational risks, regulatory scrutiny, or physical and transitional risk which impact its long-term financial viability.
To construct and tune an effective portfolio, projected trends of ESG metrics and classic credit ratings need to be examined together, to determine whether things will be going in the right direction overall.
A suitable solution helps identifying companies that not only demonstrate strong financial fundamentals using classic credit rating sources such as S&P Global Ratings, Moody's Ratings, Fitch Ratings and Morningstar DBRS (augmented by regional credit ratings when needed), but also exhibit a commitment to sustainable practices and responsible governance.
Ultimate goal can be to develop one’s own composite assessment, that informs holistically how to improve the resilience of the portfolio over time: monitoring the portfolio for its ESG developments, focusing on those which are trending well, while at the same looking very closely at those which are starting to move in the wrong direction.
For those low-assessed investments, one can then look for higher performing alternatives, move funds over to them or phase them out entirely.