Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has expanded its climate risk offering with the acquisition of Urgentem, a provider of global corporate emissions and climate transition data.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and the financial impact will not be material to ICE or impact its capital return plans.
Urgentem’s data and analytics will enable ICE to offer extended coverage of global public and private companies across new geographies, scenario risk analysis and stress testing for fund managers and banks.
“With the increased focus on climate change and the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, the investment community requires more transparency into corporate emissions and climate risk,” said Elizabeth King, chief regulatory officer and president of sustainable finance at ICE.
She added, “Urgentem’s broad database and sophisticated modelling analytics will quickly expand our offering, and together with ICE’s physical climate risk solutions, will provide a full suite of sustainable finance services.”
Urgentem provides Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data, analytics and tools for over 30,000 publicly listed and privately-held securities.
Its data will be used to enhance ICE’s growing global sustainable finance offering, which includes a corporate ESG database of over 10,000 companies, US municipal bond and MBS climate risk services.
It also comprises a suite of global corporate climate indices and a global environmental marketplace where an estimated $1 trillion in notional value equivalent of carbon allowances traded in 2021. This is equal to over half the world’s estimated total annual energy-related emissions footprint.
“As investors navigate the evolving landscape around corporate envrionment, social and governance (ESG) reporting, data has been a lynchpin for helping benchmark where companies are today, and understanding their transition plans for the years ahead,” said Urgentem’s chief executive officer Girish Narula.
ICE and Urgentem’s data solutions facilitate client regulatory disclosures, and match Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) requirements, which underlie climate-related reporting requirements from the European Union and the UK as well as proposed rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
