The Intercontinental Exchange recently announced that its ESG Reference Data coverage has been expanded and now includes over 2 million fixed income securities. ICE’s Reference Data covers equity and fixed income securities across North America, Europe and Asia.
Expansion of ESG Data Coverage
ICE’s ESG Reference Data coverage was recently expanded to now include over 2 million corporate bonds, municipals, sovereigns and money markets across North America, Europe and Asia. This dataset provides detailed ESG attributes and indicators that may be financially material, such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reported, board diversity, benefits and many others, sourced from company and publicly available third-party sources.
Anthony Belcher, Head of Sustainable Finance at ICE comments on the recent expansion of coverage, “ICE’s ESG reference data leverages the deep experience we have with fixed income instrument data and analytics and offers market participants a more complete view of ESG metrics. While much of ESG investing to date has been focused on equities, our offering allows users to assess risks and opportunities across multiple asset classes, all at the instrument level.”
ICE’s ESG Reference Data is available in a user friendly, customizable dashboard, as well as via standard datafeeds, that provides detailed access into the controversy metrics and ESG attributes about specific companies, securities and issuers.
Our Take
The ESG Reference Data was developed in collaboration with Bank of America Global Research who currently use the ICE dataset to enhance its global equity and credit analysis, including ESG-related metrics incorporated into the fundamental research reports it provides to its clients. In addition to ICE’s proprietary data set, their ESG Reference Data also provides ESG risk data from RepRisk, helping their clients identify, assess, and monitor the material ESG risks of listed companies.
ICE’s expansion of their ESG reference data to now include fixed income securities, makes sense as this leverages the firm’s deep experience in the fixed income markets. In addition, this move seems to suggest that ICE is looking to become a “one stop shop” for all ESG related reference data – both at the firm and security level. Clearly ICE is attempting to become the standard in providing clean, primary data enabling investors to benchmark ESG related risks and make consistent comparisons across companies, sectors and regions.