Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has expanded its environmental, social and governance (ESG) company data in the Asia-Pacific region.
ICE Sustainable Finance now offers global coverage of 16,000 companies across 105 countries with granular data mapped to approximately 1.4 million corporate equity and fixed income securities.
This includes 4,800 companies in the APAC region, which accounts for roughly 30% of ICE’s total worldwide coverage.
APAC will meet “increasing amounts of interest” from investor clients looking to report and manage ESG risks, according to Larry Lawrence, the firm’s head of sustainable finance products.
The result, he noted was an “increasing need for more ESG data to power more reporting, to power the construction and building of portfolios”.
The inclusion is another step closer for ICE to become the “golden source of [ESG] data,” he added.
Overall, ICE’s data encompasses roughly 550 different ESG attributes. These range from renewable energy policies to toxic emissions, and waste and water efficiency metrics for environment.
For social, this involves everything related to benefits, workforce composition, human capital training, as well as product quality and safety.
Its governance attributes feature board compensation, board independence, diversity ownership control metrics, and alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
The firm’s ESG Company Data also covers the most broadly tracked global and regional indices. For APAC, this means the Nikkei 225, ASX300, Topix 1000, and Shenzhen 300.
ICE has also increased the numbers of constituents covered in its global fixed income benchmark – the ICE BofA Global Corporate and High Yield Index (GI00) – to more than 19,000.
In January, ICE also expanded its global corporate emissions and targets data, which now covers more than 600,000 fixed income securities.
This expansion results from the integration of climate data provided by Urgentem, which ICE acquired in June 2022.
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