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    Prime ratings aim to highlight key ESG risks and opportunities based on extensive global data and qualitative research

    About Prime Launch tool

    Environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks can have a clear impact on the financial performance of an investment. Information on material ESG risks can therefore be crucial for effective investment decisions.

    This led us to apply our years of experience in analysing ESG risks to create proprietary ratings based on data from multiple inputs, adjusted using our in-house expertise, to generate ESG ratings that more accurately and reliably reflect the risks that companies and countries face.

    • The Prime corporate ESG ratings seek to help identify key ESG risks for corporate debt issuers.
    • The Prime climate risk ratings aim to highlight climate-related risks and opportunities for corporate issuers, and are aligned with the framework developed by the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
    • The Prime sovereign ESG ratings look to highlight factors that can have major implications for countries and the perceived creditworthiness of their debt.

    >3,000

    Issuers covered by Insight’s Prime corporate ESG ratings1

    95%

    Proportion of investment grade corporate debt covered by the Prime corporate ESG ratings2

    15

    Key climate issues covered by the Prime climate risk ratings1

    126

    Countries covered by the Prime sovereign ESG ratings1

    Introducing the Prime ratings

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    There is variation in ESG data from different providers. For many smaller issuers, particularly emerging market or high-yield companies, the availability of relevant non-financial data lags information from larger issuers.

    For these reasons, we developed the Prime corporate ESG ratings, with customized metrics to make the data as pertinent as possible to our analysis.

    Our proprietary corporate Insight ESG score follows a risk-centric approach with high coverage of global benchmarks.

    Corporate ESG ratings report

    To help you understand how Prime can help identify key ESG risks for corporate debt issuers, our online tool offers a simple visualization of Prime ESG ratings by industry and region, highlighting notable results. Launch the tool here.

    Prime climate risk ratings report

    The ratings aim to be a comprehensive ranking of how fixed income corporate credit issuers manage their climate change-related risks and opportunities, and how they are positioning themselves for the transition to a low-carbon economy. The ratings are designed to be used to assess risks and opportunities related to climate change.

    Please click here for more details, including:

    • how Insight uses the index
    • the methodology underlying it, and
    • details of key findings.

    We believe investing in sovereign debt can benefit from analysing ESG factors alongside other issues.

    In 2018, we introduced a proprietary country sustainability risk index in seeking to better understand the ESG risks at the country level across our portfolios.

    In 2022, our fourth-generation framework updated our ESG risk and impact approaches with expanded data sources.

    Sovereign ESG risk and impact ratings paper

    For more details please click here.

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    After more than a decade of analyzing ESG risks across our portfolios, we are very aware of the importance of sustainability information when it comes to achieving financial outcomes.

    This led us to ask how we could apply our expertise and knowledge to develop a fixed income solution. The result is Prime – a solid foundation that we believe helps our fixed income portfolio managers and analysts make better decisions, and helps our clients understand more about their portfolios and the risks they are exposed to.

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    After more than a decade of analyzing ESG risks across our portfolios, we are very aware of the importance of sustainability information when it comes to achieving financial outcomes.

    This led us to ask how we could apply our expertise and knowledge to develop a fixed income solution. The result is Prime – a solid foundation that we believe helps our fixed income portfolio managers and analysts make better decisions, and helps our clients understand more about their portfolios and the risks they are exposed to.

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    Adrian Grey, Global CIO

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