Net Purpose has built a sustainability dataset to help power the world’s most sophisticated sustainable funds and to mobilise trillions of dollars to achieve the SDGs. The dataset boasts click-to-source transparency on each data point and spans sustainable investment themes.
Social and environmental outcomes are at the heart of what Net Purpose does. It helps investors reduce the cost and resources required to measure impact, launch and grow assets in sustainable funds, and fast-track sustainable investing across their organisations.
Embedding sustainability
According to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, $120tr is committed to investing sustainably, with allocations growing at 22% year on year. However, many investors struggle to identify what is and isn’t a sustainable investment. ESG ratings measure financial risk rather than real world outcomes.
We solve this problem by providing a data set of quantified social and environmental outcomes of companies with the same fidelity as financial data.
“Our platform measures close to 5,000 companies and covers 99% of global indices, including the S&P 500 and MSCI World Indexes. We measure a company’s contribution to Sustainable Development Goals, using disclosed and scientific data against sustainable themes, covering operations, supply chain and products and services. The outcome is a comprehensive and accessible data set for our clients.
“We specialise in identifying products and services that are ‘solutions’ to global issues, using transparent disclosed data, and building a theory of change to standardise impact using scientific literature where data is not available.”
Our platform helps clients measure the impact of their portfolio and communicate this to their own investors, benchmark themselves against the Sustainable Development Goals, and find sustainable investment opportunities.
“As an example, Net Purpose partner WHEB uses our data to report on the impact of their funds across sustainable investment themes such as cleaner energy and health.”
Balancing beneficial social and environmental outcomes with financial performance is a key aspect of impact investing. To do so, it is important investors can track the outcomes of their fund as easily as they track its financial performance – this is what is enabled by Net Purpose’s tools.
Being market leaders
“We have already scaled this initiative by increasing the size of our database. A year ago, we covered under 3,000 companies, and we now cover nearly 5,000 across 99% of global indices on our platform,” says Manolopoulos. “We also help clients to benchmark themselves against SDG indicators and comply with regulation, including the UK’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR). The increased size of our dataset, as well as the improved utility of our platform, makes our tool more valuable for portfolio managers to use.”
As a result, Net Purpose has doubled its client base in the last year alone and powers over $100 billion in assets under management, and it is confident this growth will continue. It will continue expanding its data set and product offering, but it is its transparent and scientifically backed data that has differentiated it and positioned it as a market leader.
The company’s wider strategy is to make impact investing effortless for all investors by 2025. Net Purpose says that the sustainability of a company should be as easy to understand as its profitability, meaning it is based on quantifiable outcomes- based data. The company aims to mobilise trillions of dollars globally to help achieve the SDGs.
The judges’ view
Net Purpose’s quantification of real impact rather than simply of outcomes and outputs greatly impressed the judges. This is critical to well informed decision making. The small company makes an outsize impact on the market it serves, they said.
They also commended the company for working across the different leadership themes of climate, social impact and ambition for nature and biodiversity. The judges found Net Purpose has clarity of purpose and demonstrable growth, as well as proof of moving markets.
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