Financial markets data and infrastructure provider Refinitiv announced today the launch of MarketPsych ESG Analytics, a new AI-based analytics tool providing numerical insights through monitoring of millions of sustainability news and social media posts. The new tool was created in partnership with natural language processing software developer MarketPsych.

Leon Saunders Calvert, Head of Research & Portfolio Management, Refinitiv, said:

“Refinitiv MarketPsych ESG Analytics augments Refinitiv’s ESG company disclosed data with sophisticated AI tools to create high frequency sentiment data on ESG considerations based on news and social media. This is a fantastic and timely extension of our long-standing partnership with MarketPsych and we look forward to bringing this to market to add yet more value to our sustainable finance portfolio of services.”

MarketPsych ESG Analytics aims to monitor perceptions of company and country sustainability and ESG risk  through gathering and analyzing data from tens of millions of authors in thousands of global resources – over 2 million credible articles and posts every day – in a dozen languages, covering a broad range of sustainability topics including environmental impacts, sustainability and government stewardship. The AI-based natural language processing (NLP) engine locates, filters and scores ESG-themed content pertaining to specific companies as well as cities, regions and countries, while excluding corporate press releases, corporate websites and regulatory filings in order to maintain an ‘outsider’ perspective and minimize the impact of corporate greenwashing.

According to Refinitiv, the new tool can be utilized by a wide range of users, including quantitative investors looking to enhance alpha generation and risk management, discretionary investors aiming to improve portfolio construction, corporate clients seeking to monitor market perceptions of their own firms and peers, as well as regulators, analysts, researchers and governments.

Richard Peterson, CEO, MarketPsych, said:

“Through the lens of this data, our clients can explore how media perceptions and corporate behavior impact business performance over time. For example, we’ve found that the share prices of companies with higher Workplace Sentiment scores significantly outperform their peers, and it appears that happier employees generate more value for shareholders. We hope that such insights inspire positive changes in corporate structure and behavior.”