Truvalue Labs to Launch Coronavirus ESG Monitor

On April 9, Truvalue Labs will launch a webpage featuring new datasets and a dashboard built specifically for tracking Covid-19 signals. It will provide information logging the impact of the coronavirus across sectors, industries, and regions, as well as on the 26 sustainability categories laid out by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), according to a report sent to Truvalue Labs customers last week. Once live, the site will be free to the public and updated weekly.

Dubbed the Coronavirus ESG Monitor, the dashboard will track discussions of the coronavirus and it will examine the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues for companies covered by Truevalue Labs, which include more than 16,000 public and privately held businesses. The ESG data and analytics provider has also created five Covid-19 sub-signals covering social impact, labor, supply chain, response, and economic factors.

“The first three signals do overlap with SASB’s categories but are tuned specifically to capture Covid-19 implications and/or situations. The response signal captures companies shifting focus—for example, changing production to relevant products such as ventilators or vaccines. The economy signal detects information relevant to the broader, global economic situation and outlook,” the report says.

Sentiment will be scored on a scale of -20 (most negative) to 20 (most positive) with 0 as the neutral point.

The coronavirus has begun to change ESG dramatically as investors and other stakeholders re-think their concepts of what is material, or directly impactful, Thomas Kuh, head of index at Truvalue Labs, tells WatersTechnology. Issues such as labor practices and employee health, safety, and benefits are critical to most—if not all—businesses. The explosion of unstructured data regarding those topics—coronavirus-related content represents 73% of all ESG information being captured by Truvalue Labs daily right now—is more than any human analyst can manage.

In January, the firm coined the term “dynamic materiality,” a patent-pending concept indicating that every company, industry, and sector has a unique materiality signature that evolves over time based on factors like emerging technologies and new regulations.

“It’s pretty clear what issues matter. They do change, and it’s important to track them as they change, and that’s really what dynamic materiality is about,” Kuh says. “I think one of the things we’ll find out as we come out of this crisis is which companies in fact are committed, from a management perspective, to making long-term decisions.”