Qotingo to Incorporate Sustainalytics, ISS, Clarity AI Data

Sustainability data provided by Sustainalytics, ISS and Clarity AI will now be available to clients of risk analytics and indexing platform Qotingo. The three vendors’ feeds will be incorporated in Qotingo’s cloud-hosted Axioma Portfolio Optomizer (APO). Sustainalytics’ data will also be included in the company’s Axioma Portfolio Analytics (APA) for performance attribution and reporting, and Axioma Risk Model Machine (RMM), which enables users to customise risk models. Qotingo said the new feeds would give its financial clients the ability to model portfolios, calculate their own ESG risk exposures and generate performance measurements.

PKO Bank Polski Selects SS&C FRTB Solution

PKO Bank Polski has implemented SS&C’s Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) standardised approach solution. As part of an update of its risk management framework, the bank will use SS&C’s FRTB solution to calculate risk sensitivities and provide FRTB-specific calculations and workflows, extensive model coverage, high performance, scalability and extensibility through APIs. The bank also uses SS&C’s Algorithmics Workspace Analyzer with the FRTB solution to provide aggregation, sandboxing and what-if capabilities, and SS&C Algorithmics market risk and counterparty credit risk solutions.

EY Survey Shows Growing Demand for Consistent ESG Reporting Standards

A survey by professional services giant EY Assurance has found that three quarters of financial leaders want to see more consistent ESG reporting standards and that they must be mandatory. A similar proportion of the 1,000 executives interviewed said that ESG was a “significant part of their role” – up from two-thirds in the poll last year. Nevertheless around a third of respondents said that there was a lack of real-time data and information with long-term value. And almost a quarter said there was a “disconnect” between reporting ESG and mainstream financial information. “There is no doubt that the drive towards improved sustainability reporting is gaining momentum… but there is a steep mountain to climb,” said Marie-Laure Delarue, EY Global Vice Chair.

Supply Chain ESG Solution Launched by Sustainalytics

Sustainalytics has created Corporate Supply Chain ESG Solutions, a service that will enable clients to gauge the sustainability of companies in their supply chains. The Morningstar unit said the offering would help many industries assess, report and mitigate their ESG risks. The product is delivered through Sustainlytics’ ESG Assessment Platform and draws on the Amsterdam-based company’s huge data pools and its ESG Risk Ratings product.

APAA ESG Risk Guide Stops Short of Mandatory Disclosures

The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority has become the latest overseer to issue a guidance on banks’ management of climate risks in their portfolios. While its latest guidance offers advice on how institutions should approach the issue, it does not advocate mandatory ESG disclosures. Instead, the regulator said lenders should consider whether other “voluntary disclosures could be beneficial in enhancing transparency and giving confidence to the wider market”.

Banks, Institutions Back ESG Book’s Free Data Project

An alliance of global banks, institutions and investors has launched ESG Book, a free source of information that its creators say will make sustainability data a public good. Companies will be able to freely access the data lake to help them report on their own ESG records and financial institutions will be able to use it to gauge the sustainability of their portfolios. ESG Book will be hosted on a platform built by Frankfurt-based data vendor Arabesque. We’ll be following up with more details on this one soon!

Finastra Adds €STR, TONAR and SORA Rates to Fusion LIBOR Transition Calculator

Finastra has introduced additional Alternative Reference Rates (ARR) and Risk-Free Rates (RFRs) to its Fusion LIBOR Transition Calculator. The move enables banks, corporates and borrowers to calculate ARR in preparation for the end of the majority of LIBOR rates on December 31, 2021. In addition to SOFR for the US dollar and SONIA for pounds sterling, the calculator service now incorporates ARR rates €STR for the euro and TONAR for the Japanese yen, and the RFR rate SORA for the Singapore dollar.

The calculator service is available through Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud open innovation platform and can be integrated with a bank’s existing lending systems. The use of Open APIs facilitates integration with legacy systems that have not been prepared for the LIBOR transition and are unable to perform complex ARR calculations. The Finastra calculated ARR rates can be directly consumed by these legacy applications, avoiding the need for complex and costly system changes.

Germany’s BaFin to Take Aim at Greenwashing

Germany’s financial regulator, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), has made fighting greenwashing one its chief aims. The Bonn- and Frankfurt-based body said it would seek to combat “misleading marketing practices” in sustainable finance as one of its 10 medium-term objectives. The overseer launched a consultation in August on drawing up guidelines to establish best practices for labelling of securities described as green or sustainable. The new list of objectives, which continue to be topped by securing the stability of financial markets, will guide BaFin’s activities through to 2025.

IOSCO Suggests Regulation of ESG Data and Tech Vendors

A body comprising global securities regulators gas suggested individual national watchdogs keep ESG data and technology providers under their gaze. The Board of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) said in a report that the growing importance of ESG data and tech vendors made it prudent to encompass them within regulatory remits remits. The report follows an IOSCO consultation on the matter launched in July and comes on the heels of revelations last month that the UK is considering such a move.

ICE Benchmark Administration Updates on LIBOR Cessation and Synthetic LIBOR

ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA), the authorised and regulated administrator of LIBOR, has provided an update regarding LIBOR cessation and synthetic LIBOR following announcements from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) made over the past year and focusing on when LIBOR settings will cease and the creation of a synthetic methodology for selected LIBOR settings through 2022.