Due to the shakeout in the SRI agency market, it is difficult to give a single, clear answer to this question. We are currently forced to give three answers but we will upgrade these as the SRI agency market settles into a more organised shape.
Answer 1: None of them
Companies should treat SRI agencies in exactly the same way as they treat other investment research organisations. They should:
- publish a sustainability report
- webcast a presentation
- leave plenty of time for questions at the end of the webcast
- answer individual well-targeted questions
- ...but answer no questionnaires!
2) Use SRI-CONNECT
Whenever a company receives an information request from an SRI agency, the company should look up that agency’s profile on SRI-CONNECT and find out who their asset manager / asset owner clients are:
- If the agency has three or more of your Top 20 or target investors on their client list, answer the questionnaire
- If the agency doesn’t list any of your key investors, put it in the bin
3) The big six
The research agency market has been through such a shake-up recently that it’s impossible to choose based on quality – so just adopt an 80/20 rule and target the big six agencies:
- CDP (For carbon disclosure)
- EIRIS (for FTSE4Good Indices and asset management clients)
- SAM (for Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and asset management clients)
- MSCI ESG (for MSCI ESG Indices and asset management clients)
- Sustainalytics (for asset managers)
- Vigeo (for asset managers)
Unfortunately this means that you will miss out on a lot of high-quality and insightful analysis from Inrate, Oekom, Responsible Research, SI2, SIRIS etc. – see full list of SRI agencies here. But that’s just the way the cookie crumbles in a time-poor world…
