Evaluate companies’ ESG-related risks, opportunities, and impact along the corporate value chain.
The ESG ratings are supported by a global team of in-house ESG experts led by a team of sector heads with significant capital markets experience, who bring further depth of sectoral expertise to the team.
At ISS ESG, we firmly believe in the value of transparency as a catalyst for selecting the ESG solutions best suited to realizing sustainable investment objectives. As such, we are making our comprehensive Methodology and Research Process Document, an overview of the approach to evaluating the ESG performance of companies through the ESG Corporate Rating, publicly available.
The document provides detailed information on our approach to evaluating the sustainability performance of companies, and supports investor clients’ reporting needs in specific jurisdictions, as well as fulfilling stakeholder expectations with regard to (public) methodology transparency. In addition to exploring fundamental questions such as methodological foundations and materiality, the document comprehensively covers the rating methodology and process, including:
Industry Classification
Rating Structure, Weightings, and Key Issues
Assessment Rules
Rating Outputs and Signals
Rating Process
Quality Assurance
ESG RAW DATA
Customize your investment strategies with qualitative and quantitative ESG data
ESG investing is not one-size-fits-all, and diverse strategies require diverse solutions. ESG Raw Data offers a comprehensive set of environmental, social, and governance datapoints with no additional assessment or scoring overlay, enabling you to extract and act on the insights most relevant to you. Customize your investment strategies to better align with your goals.
As a IFRS Alliance Member, ISS ESG aims to educate asset owners and asset managers on the importance of ESG materiality and the inclusion of performance information for a successful ESG integration.
Holistic Approach to Assessing Sustainability Through a Double-materiality Lens
Building on extensive experience and expertise
in the field of ESG
ISS ESG has developed a holistic, gradual,
and forward-looking concept of materiality
that focuses on long-term value creation.
ISS’ ESG performance analysis assesses risks and impacts related to all relevant stakeholders such as:
EMPLOYEES
SUPPLIERS
CUSTOMERS
COMMUNITIES
ECOSYSTEMS
PRIME STATUS
Awarded to companies with an ESG performance above the sector-specific Prime threshold, which means that they fulfil ambitious absolute performance requirements.
ESG CORPORATE RATING PERFORMANCE SCALE
Companies are rated, from D- to A+, on their sustainability performance on an absolute best-in-class basis.
Introducing the Financial and ESGF (ESG + Financial) Ratings
The Financial Rating is a standalone rating that can be used on its own to assess companies’ financial performance. The ESGF Rating combines the Financial Rating and ESG Rating to provide a holistic assessment of companies’ performance. Both ratings and the underlying data factors leverage data from ISS EVA, an established standard in measuring, analyzing, projecting, valuing, and discounting a firm’s underlying economic profit rather than its accounting profit.
High-level and detailed company reports are available for download on ISS ESG’s proprietary DataDesk platform. Recent enhancements to the reports include:
New design that presents key outputs and signals in an easily digestible manner
Further insights related to Key Issues (Key Issue detail, Key Issue materiality graph)
Introduction of new financial (EVA Margin), SDG-, and climate-related scores and metrics
Additional rating performance summary pages
Integration of a year-on-year trend factor at the indicator level