About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

ICE and RisQ Release Data Service to Help Investors Quantify Social Impact of Investments

Subscribe to our newsletter

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and risQ, a Boston-based startup focused on geospatial climate, economic and demographic data, have released a data service designed to allow users to understand and score the potential social impact of an investment, particularly in US municipal bonds.

The social impact scores use dozens of variables from multiple public data sources and peer-reviewed statistical methods to help quantify multiple dimensions of socioeconomic vulnerability and need. They are designed to signal the potential social benefit of an investment within a specific area, with higher scores indicating that a financial investment in a specific community is expected to have a larger potential social impact than an investment in a community with a lower score. Once calculated, the scores are mapped to ICE US municipal bond reference data, providing an additional metric for customers to evaluate an investment or portfolio.

“These social impact scores provide a deeper level of socioeconomic and demographic data on the municipal bond market, enhancing the decision making process for investors as they execute their sustainable and socially conscious investing strategies,” says Lynn Martin, president of fixed income and data services at ICE. “By building on risQ’s expertise with geospatial climate and social data, we’re able to provide market participants with the transparency they need to quantitatively analyse and compare securities, and identify the potential social impact of investments across different communities.”

The score inputs include data capturing affluence, poverty, education, employment, housing costs, racial diversity, and health challenges. Aggregating these data points and mapping them to individual bonds can make it easier to compare cohorts and the potential social impact of an investment opportunity.

“Investors and market participants want ways to quantify and appropriately understand the potential impact of their investment. This service that we’ve created with ICE helps do that,” says Evan Kodra, CEO at risQ. “Whether investors are aligning their investment programme with their values and mission, or seeking to better quantify and understand the social impact of potential investment opportunities, these resources provide clearer insights into those goals.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Strategies and solutions for unlocking value from unstructured data

Unstructured data accounts for a growing proportion of the information that capital markets participants are using in their day-to-day operations. Technology – especially generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) – is enabling organisations to prise crucial insights from sources – such as social media posts, news articles and sustainability and company reports – that were all but...

BLOG

A-Team Group Announces Winners of its Prestigious Innovation Awards 2025

The most innovative data and technology solutions for capital markets were recognised today as A-Team Group announced the winners of this year’s A-Team Group Innovation Awards 2025. Now in its fifth year, the prestigious awards recognise the innovative projects created across the vendor and practitioner communities that provide high-value solutions to organisations within capital markets...

EVENT

TradingTech Summit MENA

The inaugural TradingTech Summit MENA takes place in November and examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions in the region.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...