The ubiquitous influence of ESG factors has been present in the investment world for a long time now. However, the recent spur in the awareness and acceptance of the importance of ESG factors for companies and investors has led to a surge in ratings and thematic benchmarking.

Some of the most valued benchmarks are Access to medicine, Access to nutrition, Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB), and Know the Chain. Investors and companies use these benchmarks to take informed decisions. Since, most of these ratings/benchmarks are developed by non-profit organizations, there is a constant pressure of optimizing their spending on research.

Therefore, partnering with specialised research firms could provide them quick access to skills and at the same time make their research processes lean and efficient.

The need and opportunity for transparent and trusted ratings and thematic benchmarking will continue to intensify with the rapid growth of ESG based investing.

Some of the successful Thematic Benchmarking and Rating Index names are:

1. Access to medicine Index

The Index analyses 20 of the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical companies on how they make medicines, vaccines and diagnostics more accessible in low and middle-income countries. It is a product of two years cycle including the review of results of previous cycle, consultation with expert stakeholders to improve the methodology for the next cycle, data collection, verification and analysis.

2. Access to nutrition Index

The Access to Nutrition Index (ATNI) rates 20 food and beverage manufacturers´ nutrition- related policies, practices, and disclosures worldwide on a recurring basis with an objective ‘Spotlight Indexes’ that score and rate the ten largest Food & Beverage manufacturers in each Spotlight Country. Methodologies for the Spotlight Indexes are adapted to fit national realities and give insight into how companies perform in specific markets.

3. Corporate Human Rights Benchmark

The Benchmark provides a comparative snapshot year-on-year of the largest companies, looking at the policies, processes, and practices they have in place to systematise their human rights approach and how they respond to serious human rights allegations. This is to prevent adverse impact of competitive nature of the market on the workers. The benchmark ranks 98 of the world’s largest publicly traded companies, from 3 sectors (Agricultural products, Apparels and Extractives), on 100 human rights indicators.

4. Know the chain

Through thematic benchmarking current corporate practices and providing practical resources that enable companies to operate more transparently and responsibly, KnowTheChain drives corporate action and investor decisions in order to understand and prevent forced labor risks within their global supply chains. Know the Chain published its second set of benchmarks in 2018 covering more than 120 companies. Their benchmarks are Information and Communications Technology, Food & Beverage and Apparel & Footwear.

5. Fair Finance Guide International

The Fair Finance Guide International coalitions have developed methodology to asses and monitor bank policies and practices towards social, environmental, and human rights. These are used for communicating with the banks, informing the public and for better democratic oversight of the financial institution. There methodology covers 23 themes/sectors & over 422 international standards and is regularly updated using the experience and expertise of all coalition members worldwide. In 2017, policies of ninety-five financial institutions in nine countries have been assessed against this methodology and over 45 case studies have been published, in the countries where a FFG operates, comparing policies with practice.

These ratings have evolved to become an indispensable tool for investors as they provide a proxy for a company’s external costs and benefits based on rating and ranking of theme specific performance or/and multi-theme composite performance. With this critical analytical information, investors can spot best performers with better risk management towards current and future regulatory, physical, human, and other risks arising from ESG factors like carbon control, minimum wage laws, etc.

Further, the reputational and competitive advantage of these ratings and benchmarking motivate companies to improve strategies towards various issues. Thematic benchmarking and ratings could help companies be more aligned with the urgent global sustainability agendas

These benchmarks are mostly funded by NGOs or governments. Due to limited funding available, these organisations are under constant pressure to optimize research and expand coverage.

They often lack other reporting skills to present their findings in the most effective format for investors, companies, and other stakeholders. Hiring an external partner that can offer reliable, innovative and cost-effective research support, that can go a long way in dealing with some of the obvious challenges such as seasonality of research, expanding coverage, and optimize costs.

At Sustainometric, we help rating/benchmarking organizations to improve research processes by:

• Building automation;
• Designing dashboards for data dissemination for a diversified set of audience;
• ESG Data collection and analysis.

For more information, please contact: hello[@]sustainometric.com