Business and financial markets information service provider Bloomberg, and Rockefeller Asset Management announced the launch of the Bloomberg Rockefeller U.S. All Cap Multi-Factor ESG Improvers Index. The new index, available through the Bloomberg terminal, aims to provide differentiated ESG factor exposure, focusing on companies’ improvement in performance on material ESG issues relative to industry peers, compared to other indices that tend to focus on screening around ESG leaders or laggards.

Casey Clark, Managing Director and Global Head of ESG Investments at Rockefeller Asset Management, said:

“We believe that investors will increasingly differentiate between ESG leaders and improvers – firms showing the greatest improvement in their ESG footprint. And that the latter offers a greater potential for generating uncorrelated alpha over the long-term.”

According to the companies, the new multifactor index aims to enable outperformance over traditional market-cap weighted indices with low tracking error and minimal sector or other factor deviations, by combining the Rockefeller ESG Improvers Score – an uncorrelated and proprietary alpha enhancing factor – with quality and low volatility factors. The index also incorporates shareholder engagement techniques that help create shareholder value and catalyze positive change.

Alan Campbell, Head of Index Product Management at Bloomberg, said:

“Institutional investors are focusing now on underlying ESG factors and trends, so we are expanding our index offering to include ESG improvers. Together with Rockefeller we are providing investors with a product that captures high quality and low volatility companies that exhibit positive ESG momentum.”

Chip Montgomery, Managing Director and Head of Business Strategy & Corporate Development at Rockefeller Asset Management, added:

“Given Bloomberg’s history as a multi-asset index provider, and our experience in the ESG space, we felt this was a natural partnership to bring ESG Improvers benchmarks to the market.”