Following its 2022 Environmental Finance Sustainable Investment award for 'ESG data provider of the year, Africa', Risk Insights has won 'ESG research of the year, Africa' this year.

Risk Insights has published a report that analyses ESG disclosures in the African banking sector. The firm used its ESG GPS™ rating tool to analyse and dissect ESG materiality data for south, east, and west African banks.

The tool matches the spread of voluntary and mandatory disclosures on environmental and social aspects with a tool it says can help financial institutions understand ESG-related risk exposure on the continent.

It rates more than 500 firms in Africa, including most large-, mid- and small- capitalisation companies on a small group of African exchanges.

The report found that South Africa was leading the way in ESG disclosure, ahead of Nigerian and Kenyan banks, across environmental and social factors. South African banks are able to leverage the responsible investment index FTSE4Good for social disclosure and must adhere to Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listing requirements including integrated reporting.

The JSE has published voluntary ESG disclosure guidelines for South Africa. It is hoped this will have the effect of strengthening disclosure in the country and make impact capital more attractive.

Founder and executive chair of Risk Insights, Anushka Bogdanov, commented: "At Risk Insights we believe in power of good: good people, good technology and good purpose.

"Good technology through artificial intelligence and machine learning applied by good people working at Risk Insights to develop cutting-edge products will propel Risk Insights to play our part in the world to address sustainability challenges in Africa by leveraging good products across the continent with data science and analytics to leapfrog change."