Understand ESG analysis
What the ESG tab shows — portfolio ESG scores, business involvements, sanctioned nations, UNGC signatories, and norms-based screening — and how it's used.
ESG analysis surfaces a portfolio's ESG scores alongside its screening exposure: business involvements, sanctioned-nations exposure, UN Global Compact (UNGC) signatory status, and norms-based screening.
What it shows
ESG score
The portfolio's overall ESG score, plus its Environment, Social, and Governance pillar scores, each compared against a selected benchmark. Highlights the portfolio's highest- and lowest-scoring holdings overall, and the best- and worst-scoring holding within each pillar.
See How ESG scores are calculated for how individual holdings are scored and aggregated into the portfolio score.
Business involvements
Flags portfolio exposure to controversial business activities, in two forms:
- Revenue-threshold categories (e.g. Defence, Alcohol, Alcohol producer) — company count and % of AUM, filterable by revenue threshold.
- Involvements from public reports — binary flags (e.g. animal cruelty, animal testing, GMO products, nuclear weapons, cannabis) for companies with a known involvement but no revenue data to apply a threshold against.
Sanctioned nations
Exposure to companies operating in sanctioned countries (e.g. Russia, Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe), shown as company count and % of AUM per country.
Unlike business involvement screening, which only flags a company once it crosses a revenue threshold (e.g. 5% or 10%), sanctions screening is binary — Involved or Not Involved. International sanctions law leaves little room for exceptions, so any exposure is flagged regardless of financial materiality: even marginal, indirect, or residual exposure is enough for a company to appear on the list.
Exposure falls into two categories:
- Direct exposure — the company maintains physical offices, active operations, assets, or direct service offerings within a sanctioned nation.
- Indirect exposure — supply chain or third-party connections tied to a sanctioned nation, e.g. sourcing raw materials from a primary supplier based in a sanctioned region, or using local distribution partners registered there.
UNGC
Lists the portfolio's UN Global Compact signatory companies, with each company's ESG score and portfolio weight.
Norms-based screening
Screens holdings against five categories — UNGC, Environmental, Human Rights, Labor Rights, and Corruption and Fraud — each rated by severity (No violation, Low, Medium, High, Severe, No data). Companies can be grouped by category and severity, or filtered by severity and ESG score to find specific holdings.
How severity is determined
Each ESG controversy is scored on a scale of 0–100, based on two equally weighted factors: the severity of the incident's impact (50%), and how effectively the company manages and mitigates it (50%). That score maps to a grading scale:
- No violation — no involvement in any impact incident.
- Low — a low-impact incident with medium or high management intervention.
- Medium — a medium- or high-impact incident with medium or high management intervention.
- High — a high- or medium-impact incident with medium or low management intervention.
- Severe — a severe-impact incident with low management intervention.
- No data — not enough data to make an assessment.
If a company faces multiple controversies within a category, the worst-rated issue overrides the others — the maximum severity across its incidents determines its overall classification for that category.
How it's used
- SFDR Article 8 "Do No Significant Harm" testing
- MiFID II sustainability suitability input
- Identifying stewardship and engagement targets
- Verifying compliance with internal exclusion policies
Related features
- How ESG scores are calculated
- Export an ESG PDF report — share ESG scores with end clients
- Principal Adverse Impacts — for the regulated PAI indicators
- Portfolio overview