With the changing global risk landscape, Indian businesses will have to discover new ways to reduce their environmental footprint and be more efficient and responsible with the use of water, energy and other natural resources. They will also have to integrate costs pertaining to their environmental impact into their product pricing as well as deal with the expectations of various stakeholders in terms of transparency, disclosures and business ethics.

These aspects, in absence of risk management and mitigation mechanism, will aggravate the credit risk for lenders and make returns from investment more uncertain. Simple ESG compliance may not be sufficient to improve companies’ profitability.

This is where an independent, unbiased, forward-looking and nuanced ESG rating system can help corporates with measuring their own performance and relative performance among their industry peers. It enables them in identifying weaknesses and opportunities and strengthening their competitive advantage. ESG rating has been accepted by the investor community as a very effective tool to identify companies aligned with their investment interests. Moreover, regulators, financial institutions, think tanks, etc. want to better understand & monitor companies & industries’ ESG performance & impact on sustainable development.

ESGRisk.ai’s rating is an objective, independent and unbiased opinion on a company’s ability to mitigate future/emerging risks associated with Environment, Social, and Governance issues that have material financial impact based on publicly available data. Our ESG ratings foster informed decision-making when it comes to e.g. choosing ESG investments, assessing a particular companies or industries performance, reviewing ESG business strategies and identifying need for policy interventions.

To actively contribute to and be aligned with the worldwide ESG movement and policy dialogue, we are signatories of various global frameworks. Being a member of the GRI community, ESGRisk.ai actively contributes to advancing sustainability reporting. Moreover, Acuité is the first credit rating agency from India to become a signatory of PRI’s ESG in Credit Risk and Ratings Statement in order to enhance the systematic and transparent consideration of financial material ESG factors in the assessment of creditworthiness.