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ESG data: a buyer's guide

What we list in this category, how the field splits between long-established products and newer ones, and the questions worth pressing on before you commit.

Every entry below was recorded from a page we opened, and each carries the source we read. Where we could not establish something it is left blank rather than guessed. Read how this site works if you want the detail.

Long-established products

Recorded as established: in production for many years, usually with a deep reference base and broad coverage. Those are real advantages, and so is the fact that a fifteen-year horizon is easier to argue for a supplier that has already lasted one.

• Apex Fund Administration — Single-source fund and asset servicing across hedge, private equity, private debt, real assets, digital assets and UCITS. source
• Bloomberg ESG Data — ESG data on roughly 16,000 companies delivered inside the Bloomberg Terminal alongside market data. source
• CalibreRMS — AI-assisted research management system covering analyst notes, models, consensus tracking, decision logging and ESG stewardship; offices in London, Melbourne and Sydney. source
• GRESB SFDR Reporting Solution — Real estate and infrastructure fund managers report SFDR principal adverse impacts from asset-level data collected in the annual GRESB assessment; General Atlantic took a majority stake in 2024. source
• ISS ESG Climate & Nature Analytics — Carbon footprinting, physical and transition climate risk, net-zero alignment and biodiversity impact data for portfolios. source
• LSEG ESG Scores and Data — ESG scores plus Green Revenues, climate transition and sovereign sustainability datasets delivered through LSEG Workspace; this is the former Refinitiv ESG business and the Refinitiv brand has been retired since 2023. source
• LSEG Workspace — Market data workstation combining datasets, Reuters News, StarMine and MarketPsych analytics and a Python environment called CodeBook; it is the successor to Refinitiv Eikon. source
• MSCI ESG Ratings — Scores companies on exposure to industry-specific environmental, social and governance risks, and feeds most of the ESG indices institutions benchmark against. source

Newer products

Recorded as modern or emerging. Newer suppliers often offer capability and pricing the incumbents do not, and they carry risks the incumbents do not: fewer references at your size, less operating history, and concentration if they are small. Both belong in the same comparison, on the same fields.

• Connect Earth Sustainable Finance Operating System — Aggregates ESG, SDG and PAI data from several underlying providers and turns it into publish-ready SFDR and EU Taxonomy disclosures; acquired the Stockholm firm Datia. source
• CuriumEDM — Smaller-footprint enterprise data management and data quality platform for buy-side operations, available as CuriumSaaS hosted on Microsoft Azure; founded as Sun Street Limited and renamed in 2015. source
• ESG Book Access — Validated public sustainability data plus a disclosure platform and a regulatory-intelligence product; ESG Book announced a merger with EthiFinance to form a European credit and sustainability rating group, so the combined entity name may change. source
• Gyre Hub — Portfolio analytics platform covering portfolio management and construction, back testing, performance, risk, compliance, reconciliation, portfolio accounting, ESG and tax. source
• Novata Platform — Collects ESG metrics from private portfolio companies and rolls them up to fund level for private equity and credit managers; raised $30 million in February 2023 and acquired Atlas Metrics in October 2025. source
• Pathzero — Ingests holdings from custodians and fund administrators, enriches them with public and private market climate metrics, and produces audit-ready financed-emissions reporting. source
• Persefoni for Financial Services — Carbon accounting built for financed emissions, investor emissions reporting and portfolio company engagement; raised $50 million in 2023 and a further $23 million in 2025. source
• Rundit — Portfolio monitoring, performance calculation and LP reporting for VC and PE funds; the company is registered as Rundit Oy and its own timeline dates the first platform to 2017. source

What to ask

These come from the same question bank our request-for-proposal process uses, so a guide and an RFP never drift apart. The four sections below carry the most weight in that bank.

Functional fit

Whether the system does the job for YOUR instruments, markets and volumes — not for the demonstration portfolio. The questions separate what runs in production today from what is on the roadmap, because that distinction disappears in a sales meeting and reappears during implementation. It also asks what still has to be typed in by hand, which every system has and few volunteer.

• Which asset classes does the product support in production today?
• Is there a full audit trail of who changed what and when, and can it be exported?
• Does the system enforce segregation of duties between front and back office?
• Is maker-checker approval supported on material actions, and is it configurable by action type?
• Can a valuation be sourced and approved independently of the people who trade?

Security and resilience

Whether the vendor's security is independently attested or merely asserted. The questions ask for certifications you can read, penetration tests you can see the summary of, and recovery objectives that are written down. Incident history is asked directly, because a vendor that has handled a breach well is often a safer choice than one that has never been tested.

• Which independent attestations do you hold currently?
• Will you provide the most recent report under a non-disclosure agreement?
• Is data encrypted in transit and at rest?
• Is single sign-on supported, and is multi-factor authentication enforced?
• Can your own staff see our data, and is that access logged and reviewable by us?

Commercial terms

Total cost across the whole term, and what happens if you leave. Year one is asked separately from years two to five because year one hides where the money goes. The section asks explicitly what is NOT included, since the gap between the quote and the invoice lives there, and it asks about exit terms while you still have the leverage to negotiate them.

• How is the product priced?
• What is the total first-year cost for our stated requirement, including implementation?
• What is the total annual cost in years two through five?
• What is NOT included in that figure?
• Is there a contractual cap on annual price increases?

Artificial intelligence

If a model touches your data, on what terms. This section exists because the answers differ enormously between vendors and are rarely offered unprompted. It asks whether your data trains models serving other clients, whether you can opt out and keep full function, whether a human reviews output before it affects a book or a client report, and who is liable when a model is wrong. Skip it only if you genuinely do not care.

• Does the product use machine learning or generative AI anywhere in its normal operation?
• Is client data ever used to train models that serve other clients?
• Can we opt out of AI features entirely and keep full product function?
• Does our data leave your infrastructure to reach those providers?
• Is a human review step required before an AI output affects a book, a trade or a client report?

See all 32 products in ESG data · Glossary