ISS STOXX - Engagement & Bespoke Solutions
Data category
- Environmental data
- Governance data
- Indices/Exchange data
- Research data
- Social data
- Verification/Certification/External opinion
The data offers solutions for:
- Carbon footprinting
- Environmental impact analysis and insight
- Geospatial/location data
- Investment decisions and portfolio insight
- Nature-based information
- Nature-based information: Biodiversity
- Norms-based screening
- Physical risk
- Reporting: EU Regulations
- Reporting: Impact
- Reporting: Other Regulations
- Reporting: SFDR
- Reporting: TNFD
- Reporting: UN SDGs
- Social impact analysis and insight
Who are the data users?
- Financial institutions
- Government
- Investors
- Trustees
- Data is used by a broad range of institutional investors, asset managers, asset owners, fund managers, banks, government institutions, universities and research firms.
Where and how do you source your data?
Norm Based Engagement
Companies considered for inclusion to the Norm-Based Engagement process are sourced based on factors surrounding ISS ESG’s Norm-Based Research. ISS ESG carries out extensive dialogue with companies and expert stakeholders – governmental or inter-governmental bodies, non-governmental organisations, academic organisations – to validate facts relevant to the incident or controversy and to the company’s response to it. Only companies that fail to respond to an incident in line with established norms and standards are subject to engagement.
Thematic Engagement
ISS ESG identifies a list of target companies that show a certain underperformance based on a specific definition per theme. A select number of large market capitalisation companies based on a list of specific indicators are targeted, with a geographical distribution meeting the needs of global investors.
Data comes from the following proprietary ISS ESG solutions:
- Carbon Risk Rating
- Net Zero Alignment Data
- Water Risk Rating
- ESG Corporate Rating
- SDG Impact Rating
- SDG Solutions Assessment
- Governance QualityScore
- Modern Slavery Scorecard
What is the cost for your data offering?
Pricing for this solution is available upon request.
What are the key attributes that differentiate the data you offer?
Collaborative ESG Engagement Services
· Cost-effective approach to active ownership. Active participation in Norm-Based Engagement service provides a systematic and cost-efficient approach to active ownership across markets in response to controversies related to responsible business conduct.
· The cumulative weights of shareholders’ voices. The collaborative setting of the engagement outreach is designed to ensure the highest level of effectiveness. This collaborative engagement is often more effective in wielding influence and raising awareness with companies on the identified issues.
· Benefits from a foundation of high quality, dynamic Norm-Based Research. The in-depth Norm-Based Research on which the service is based ensures the selection of relevant companies and engagement objectives.
· Insights from industry specialists. ISS ESG employs a dedicated team of researchers with specialized backgrounds in global norms topics. The engagement team provides insight and dedicated experience on the environmental and social issues identified. The team’s broad language skills and understanding of ESG issues allows it to identify, analyse and track controversies.
Bespoke Research & Advisory
· Flexibility: Through its Bespoke Research & Advisory Solutions team, ISS ESG has dedicated resources to undertake custom projects for its clients.
· Expertise: ISS ESG’s Bespoke Research & Advisory Solutions team with years of experience in a wide range of asset classes.
Index Solutions
· Cooperation with in-house index specialists. In November 2023, ISS announced the completion of its transaction to add STOXX, Qontigo’s index business, under the newly created “ISS STOXX” group of companies, operating under one leadership to form a combined ESG, data, index, and analytics provider. By leveraging the unique profile of the full ISS STOXX offering, ISS ESG will enable institutional investors to optimize their portfolio with the existing and future ISS ESG index solutions.
Climate Voting Policy
· Leverages leading in-house ESG data solutions. ISS ESG’s extensive, unique climate data and proprietary research, along with issue expertise, provides a model for assessment of a company’s climate-related performance and disclosures that, in turn, is used to inform climate-based proxy voting recommendations for subscribing clients.
· Holistic view of climate impact. The Climate Voting Policy includes views on a company’s GHG emissions, climate strategy, and impact of its activities on climate, putting these into context within its sector and incident-based climate risk exposure. The Climate Voting Policy can be part of a climate-concerned investor’s toolbox and can complement shareholder engagement.
· Robust and transparent scorecard approach. Policy framework relies on a scorecard approach, reflecting varied climate-related risk factors to produce insightful research and subsequent vote recommendations. Scorecard results build year-on-year enabling evaluation of company performance over time.
· International expertise and local support. Exceptional client service is a hallmark of ISS’ business model with local research, consultants and operational support represented in a dedicated service team. The client support team builds the bridge for clients to the highly experienced team of analysts to ensure clients are supported by knowledgeable professionals to support business objectives.
· An integrated environmental, social and governance solution. The service combination of the various governance and responsible investment related services offered by ISS allows investors to address ESG challenges with one common approach and rely on global account management and research teams able to offer coherent and unified answers and solutions to their ESG needs. ISS ESG is a true one-stop shop, able to support investors across all ESG related topics.
Most recent significant update:
Q2 2023
ISS STOXX Biodiversity Index Suite launch
The new the ISS STOXX Biodiversity Index Suite index suite helps interested clients align portfolios with their biodiversity impact reduction goals.
Planned future enhancements:
A key focus is the integration of data, engagement, voting and investment solutions under ISS STOXX to be in the position of serving as key partner along the investor’s value chain.
ISS ESG’s development roadmap includes plans to increase our asset-level database and broadening and deepening fixed-income coverage as well as alternative assets.
What trends are you seeing in terms of customer demand?
Investors increasingly want to make use of the entire tool box to either manage risk or achieve impact around their investments. This can result in the need to engage with companies that have been identified as laggards in certain ESG-linked themes, to vote in line with sustainable investing policies at an AGM, to choose alternative investment strategies and benchmark catering to certain ESG-linked goals and to automatically report on all of the above. ISS STOXX is uniquely positioned to serve as a one-stop shop for the tool box content and partner to turn such needs into action.
Contacts
Till Jung
Head of ISS ESG
till.jung@iss-esg.com
+49.89.46.2248162
