ACA Group, the governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisor in financial services, announced that it has acquired Ethos ESG, a provider of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings data and software “for financial advisors, asset managers, institutions, and investors.”
This acquisition “marks ACA’s first analytics offering, which will be paired with ACA’s ESG experts to form an integrated tech and advisory offering under the ESG Advisory practice.”
ACA’s existing ESG Advisory practice “supports with a range of programmatic needs for firms that integrate ESG into their business or investment activities.”
This currently “includes advice and implementation support around strategy, policies/procedures, regulations and frameworks, training, and external reporting, among other areas.” With Ethos, ACA’s clients will now also be able “to easily analyze investments and automate several elements of ESG reporting.”
Founded in 2019, Ethos offers “an interactive platform that allows for the evaluation of over 350,000 impact ratings including companies, stocks, and funds through a prism of 45 ESG causes such as climate change, racial justice, mental health and more.”
Providing full transparency into how each impact score is calculated and the ability to upload portfolios and create models, Ethos allows for GRC professionals “to understand the ESG characteristics of their investments and make responsible decisions that align with their firm’s values and ESG commitments.”
Ethos uses “a proprietary set of approximately 100 underlying databases to generate its ratings.”
These databases “provide a unique impact view of ratings, as well as provide insight into key metrics where available.”
The databases are “fully transparent, so clients can see which underlying database source for each data point.” Ethos also has capabilities “developed to quickly scrape the public domain for material publicly available information to include in the ratings.” These capabilities “allow Ethos to quickly add company coverage to help clients achieve full coverage of their investment portfolio.”
Ethos has “invested in innovation through the recent launch of its Impact Calculator, an embeddable widget that takes a dollar amount and immediately calculates the real-world equivalent impact of investing that amount in a specific fund or other product, compared to a benchmark.”
Additionally, Ethos recently “introduced its Carbon Neutral Certification program for mutual funds and ETFs, developed in conjunction with Change Finance.”
Through the certification, Ethos performs “an independent analysis of a funds carbon footprint (covering Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission) and carbon credits (offsets) to verify whether the fund is carbon neutral during a specified period.”
Shvetank Shah, CEO of ACA Group, said:
“This is an exciting step in helping to grow our presence in the ESG space and is ACA Group’s first foray into analytics as a service. We are invigorated to be building out and launching our data capabilities, starting with Ethos ESG. Combining data with our scalable solutions will continue to empower our clients to reimagine GRC and protect and grow their business.”
Luke Wilcox, Founder and CEO of Ethos ESG, remarked:
“We are thrilled to partner with ACA Group, as their brand and reach in the GRC space is well-known. Not only is taking into consideration the ESG impact of your decisions right on its merits, but greater transparency into ESG issues helps firms mitigate risk and make informed choices while growing sustainably.”
Dan Mistler, Head of ESG Advisory at ACA Group, added:
“This pairing will help us to leverage data in a new way to help firms of all sizes develop and monitor their ESG programs to mitigate risk, make informed choices, combat greenwashing, and grow profitably and sustainably in the process. Access to high-quality, transparent ESG data is an essential part of any ESG endeavor, and our partnership with Ethos will allow us to build and protect our clients’ ESG strategies in ways few others can.”