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Substantive Research: How to Combat Greenwashing? Find the Right Data Partner

    Highlights and insights:

    “Substantive Research, the research discovery and research spend analytics provider for the buy-side, has published the findings of its independent survey of the evolving Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) data provider marketplace.  Its final report is entitled: “How to Combat Greenwashing? Find the Right Data Partner”.

    Substantive Research has identified a series of trends and insights in the evolving ESG research market:

    • Whilst many consumers of ESG data select well-established institutions as their supplier, Substantive Research has discovered an extremely rich and diverse ecosystem of providers outside of the ‘household names’. 
    • Start-ups (1-5 years in existence) already make up over a third of market supply, some 39% of Substantive Research’s list, while Mid-level (started 6-10 years ago) and Established firms (started 10+ years ago) constitute 24% and 37%, respectively. 
    • 53% of the providers are generalists, in the sense that they provide all three Environmental, Social and Governance data to clients while only 33% specialize in ‘E’, ‘S’, or ‘G’ only.  As the ESG process within asset managers evolves, shopping for data is likely to increasingly target specialists, as buy-side firms look to create their own ‘special sauce’.
    • Of these specialists, just 5% are targeted towards Social, 70% specialize in Environmental and 25% in Governance.
    • 70% of the providers have developed their own ESG frameworks in combination with one or more of 20 other global sustainable reporting standards.”
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