Sustainability data are provided by at least one of the following sustainability data providers: The Upright Project, MSCI ESG Research, Physis Investment and Bloomberg.
The choice to have multiple sustainability data providers is driven by the objective of reducing data inconsistency issues.
The selection of external sustainability data providers is based, among others, on their data quality verification processes, in order to ensure, to the maximum possible extent, that sustainability data are as reliable as allowed by market standards.
SDG performance data are sourced from MSCI ESG Research and are internally elaborated in order to assess firm- and portfolio-level SDG performance on a scale ranging from -100% to +100%.
Decarbonisation data are sourced from MSCI ESG Research and The Upright Project. Decarbonisation data encompass scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 GHG emissions data, as well as carbon intensity data. It may occur that GHG emissions data are estimated on a best-effort basis, owing to inconsistent corporate disclosure or data unavailability. Whenever available, actual decarbonisation data are preferred, insofar as corporate disclosures related to GHG emissions rely on consistent methodologies.
Net impact performance data are derived from The Upright Project’s Net Impact Framework. The net impact of a company is the net sum of costs and benefits that the company creates. Costs and benefits include all types of costs and benefits – including externalities. Since net impact is a measure of costs and benefits, it can also be referred to as net value creation of a company. The Upright net impact model measures costs and benefits in four dimensions: environment, health, society, and knowledge. Examples of costs include e.g. GHG emissions by a car factory, usage of highly-skilled labor by an IT company, and damage to human health caused by sugar-sweetened beverages. Examples of benefits include e.g. improvements in health caused by a cancer medicine, knowledge created by research equipment, and pollution removed by a catalytic converter. Further methodological details on Upright’s net impact data are available at the following link: https://www.uprightproject.com/downloads/model-whitepaper-v2.pdf
Net impact data are processed in the investment process, so as to generate firm- and portfolio-level net impact performance assessments. Such assessments are then used, among others, to determine whether companies meet minimum impact performance standards in order to qualify as sustainable investments.
Owing to current limited availability of standardized sustainability data, both actual and estimated data will be used to measure investment-level EU Taxonomy alignment, SDG performance, health impact performance, net impact performance and decarbonisation performance. Due to limited data standardisation and availability, sustainability data can be subject to a certain degree of uncertainty, which is expected to decrease over time, mainly due to an evolving regulatory framework and limited corporate disclosure. Data are estimated on a best-effort basis and external sustainability data providers are selected, among others, also for their internal data quality verification processes. Whenever available, actual sustainability data are preferred.