Post the Biden victory and now the release of updated European Sustainable Finance Disclosure regulation, capital markets are gearing up for the new mantra that “Green is Now Good”. This is the very concept discussed at FIX EMEA 2020 back in September – ESG is no longer a fringe concept but now an integral part of the larger investment ecosystem. Major business risks, decisions and strategies stand upon ESG factors and regulators are concerned that investors are not sufficiently protected by piecemeal, ad-hoc, inconsistent information.
The industry is facing a growing “tsunami” of data, creating challenges in mapping different uncorrelated datasets to extract the relevant information, including how to:
- Move niche investment strategies across organisations, ensuring the relevant department and team has access to the relevant data while managing proprietary data sets and current licensing models;
- Address the new data challenges as investment policies move from Environmental to Social and Governance factors which have less hard data and are more subjective;
- Establish the accuracy and completeness of data with which to make investment decisions, which are made more complex by the myriad of rating systems from historic providers as well as rising numbers of new entrants.
Join the FIX ESG Working Group to assess ways in which the FIX Trading Community can provide practical support to the industry in the creation of standards and protocols for ESG. Contact the Program Office to participate!