Responding to new regulations and the growth of socially responsible investing, Thomson Reuters Corp (NYSE:TRI) has announced that it has enhanced its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) offering on Thomson Reuters Eikon with the launch of a new application that enables buy-side professionals to analyze real-time ESG data and incorporate it into socially responsible investment decisions.
Developed and supported by TruValue Labs, Inc., Insight360 complements Thomson Reuters existing ESG offering by providing real-time access to material, relevant data and events related to sustainability, and ESG statistics for over 7,500 publicly-traded companies.
ESG financial data incorporated in the asset management industry grew by 45% over the last four years, representing $59 trillion of assets under management. The use of ESG is particularly relevant in Europe as a result of EU mandates requiring companies with more than 500 employees to disclose diversity, environmental, and other related factors. In the U.S., a number of large pension funds – particularly public sector funds – and other institutional investors have increased ESG scrutiny related to their investments.
“Changing regulations, market conditions, and political factors are driving greater awareness and scrutiny of ESG-related metrics among asset managers globally,” said Ranjit Tinikar, managing director and head of advisory and investment management, Thomson Reuters. “Through our collaboration with TruValue, Inc., financial institutions now have access to a set of comprehensive data solutions to analyze sustainability and ESG factors, and apply them to their relevant investment decisions. This further demonstrates our ongoing pledge to offer powerful solutions that drive informed investment strategies for our clients.”
“Corporate risk comes in many forms and ‘extra-financial risk’ – including regulatory concerns, social/cultural backlash, product liabilities, intellectual property portfolios, employee actions, and political risk- all impact performance,” said Hendrik Bartel, CEO and co-founder, TruValue Labs. “We are proud that Thomson Reuters recognizes the power and value of Insight360 technology for extracting meaningful signals from the noise. ESG, extra-financial risk and Corporate Social Responsibility are critical factors in today’s investment decisions and a meaningful differentiator to investors and capital market players looking for a competitive edge.”
“The addition of Insight360 to the expanding list of third party apps in Eikon further demonstrates our commitment towards partnering with innovative companies, and providing collaborative solutions over open platforms that meet the needs of our clients,” added Yvette Jackson, global head of product management and partner platform.
Thomson Reuters provides structured and standardized ESG research data for over 400 metrics, including all exclusion (ethical screening) criteria and all aspects of sustainability performance. ESG data is gathered from publicly available information sources and is manually collected to ensure that the information is standardized, comparable and reliable. All of the ESG data collected is quality controlled and verified in a rigorous process by our experienced analysts and robust automated checks. The Thomson Reuters Environmental, Social and Governance Indices allow firms to mitigate and assess the risk of companies against ESG factors and help socially responsible investors to navigate around ESG risks.
Insight360 is fully integrated with context-sharing within Eikon. The app collects and analyzes data related to 14 categories of sustainable investing from over 75,000 data sources. The data is fully transparent and makes ESG factors easy to understand and communicate.
Thomson Reuters Eikon is a powerful and intuitive next-generation solution for consuming real-time and historical data, enabling financial markets transactions and connecting with the financial markets community. Its award-winning news, analytics and data visualization tools help its users make more efficient trading and investment decisions across asset classes and instruments including commodities, derivatives, equities, fixed income and foreign exchange. Eikon is an open platform, customizable to the individual needs of a financial professional or institution.
In March, Thomson Reuters announced a series of content and workflow enhancements for buy side analysts and portfolio managers. In addition to the ESG data, Eikon customers can now access I/B/E/S estimates, Reuters news, unique StarMine quant models, a renowned Deals database, fund ratings from Lipper, Datastream economics, and other products. This is the first time all these content sets have been available in a single platform, potentially enabling users to make more connections between data sets, gain unique insights and generate new ideas.