Innovation & Technology Innovation & Technology

New Transparency Technology Provides Window Into ESG Data for Over 4,000 Companies

Investors, regulators, NGOs and consumers have yet another way to access companies’ sustainability data with the release of Arabesque S-Ray, an easy-to-use application that streamlines environmental, social and governance (ESG) information for over 4,000 of the world’s largest corporations.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 7 years ago | About a 2 minute read

Investors, regulators, NGOs and consumers have yet another way to access companies’ sustainability data with the release of Arabesque S-Ray, an easy-to-use application that streamlines environmental, social and governance (ESG) information for over 4,000 of the world’s largest corporations.

Developed by Arabesque, an ESG quant asset manager that uses self-learning quantitative models and big data to assess the performance and sustainability of companies, the diagnostic technology processes countless data points to evaluate companies in three ways:

GC Score: a normative assessment of each company based on the core principles of the United Nations Global Compact
ESG Score: a sector specific analysis of each corporation’s performance on financially material ESG issues
Preference Filter: a search tool that allows anyone to check the business involvements of companies against their personal values

“With its name inspired by the impact of the X-Ray on medicine, Arabesque S-Ray enables anyone to look beneath a company’s surface. Our objective is to take sustainability into the mainstream by making it available in a practical and cost-efficient way. S-Ray’s unbiased algorithms harness the power of artificial intelligence, processing big data to produce a daily snapshot of a corporation’s sustainability,” said Omar Selim, CEO of Arabesque.

Through machine learning and big data, Arabesque S-Ray systematically combines over 200 ESG metrics with news signals from over 50,000 sources across 15 languages.

It is the first tool of its kind to rate companies on the normative principles of the United Nations Global Compact: Human Rights, Labour Rights, the Environment, and Anti-Corruption (GC Score). Additionally, Arabesque S-Ray provides an industry-specific assessment of companies’ performance on financially material sustainability criteria (ESG Score).

Both scores are combined with a preferences filter that allows users to better understand each company’s business involvements and how those activities align with personal values.

Speaking on the launch of Arabesque S-Ray, Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, said: “The power of transparency will help to create more sustainable corporate practices.”

The technology will be piloted as an integrity measure by the UN Global Compact later this year and is available to the general public for free with a three-month data delay. A paid subscription service for corporations, investors and investment professionals has also been developed, with access to daily information, an in-depth dashboard on each company and download functions.