Company
Date Published
Author
Harish Arora
Word count
1395
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

At Ernst & Young LLP, the company recognizes the importance of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors in investing, with 80% of their value composed of intangible assets. ESG stands for environment, social, and governance, encompassing issues such as brand awareness, intellectual property, human rights, working conditions, transparency, ethics, and data privacy. The ESG data market is highly polluted with numerous climate tech and FinTech data providers producing aggregated data on a daily basis, alongside hundreds of global ESG provisions. Adhering to these requirements is crucial for investors, as survey results show that every portfolio manager has started or plans to start using ESG attributes in their investment decision-making process. Graphs have been instrumental in reframing the ESG problem and making it clearer, enabling the company to untangle the complex data landscape by coordinating, connecting, and mobilizing ESG data through a graph structure. The approach involves creating nodes for each provision, mapping categories, and linking frameworks through similar questions, utilizing the universe of ESG data vendors. By chaining existing metadata relationships, the disclosure graph can translate requirements and find missing information to reduce reporting burdens when new frameworks arrive. The graph also enables expansion with real data and works across various examples, such as mortgage portfolios, stocks, baskets of companies, bonds, and indices. Future improvements include adding a semantic layer on top for easier understanding by business users and expanding the data fabric to integrate data and metadata in the same graph.