Providing green investors with metrics on their impact

A new platform helps investors monitor the sustainability of their investment portfolios

Spotted: The amount of money invested in assets classified as ESG, according to different definitions, is expected to reach $50 trillion (around €51 trillion) by 2025. Despite this, it is still extremely difficult for investors to measure the performance of their portfolio against climate and other sustainability goals. To help organisations and individuals make sustainable investment choices, a new platform called Net Purpose has built a database of social and environmental performance.

Net Purpose’s platform allows investors to upload their portfolio and rapidly receive information about its social and environmental performance, such as how well the portfolio is contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals or other climate targets as compared to a benchmark. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to incorporate facts from thousands of sustainability reports into its database.

In addition to AI models, Net Purpose also has a core team of experts, who review and validate the information using expertise in various areas including impact investing, AI, financial data, environmental science, and public health. As well as comparing their portfolio against a benchmark, the platform allows investors to track their performance against a goal, such as a reduction in carbon emissions.

Sam Duncan, Net Purpose founder and CEO, explains the organisations’ goal, saying, “In the race to achieve climate and other sustainable goals, the sophistication of sustainable and impact investing is rapidly advancing. Investors are demanding the facts on the social and environmental performance of their funds, just like they do financial return. We are proud to arm investors with trusted and transparent data, and we are honoured to power the most sophisticated investors in the world.”

Maximising the sustainability of investing has been the focus of a growing number of innovations. These include products such as a platform that helps companies track ESG, sustainability, and CSR in one place, and a machine learning model that tracks performance against the UN development goals.

Written By: Lisa Magloff