CalSTRS to be First to Use Breakthrough Online Solution Providing Financial Professionals with Performance Data Based on Major Environmental Criteria

In a major step forward for investment analysts, the extensive environmental performance data available from Trucost will now be accessible for the first time over FactSet. This will allow investors to seamlessly embed environmental risk management into their everyday decision making, alongside traditional financial metrics.

The new partnership creates an integrated approach to analyzing the environmental performance and associated financial risk of all companies across the major investment indices, including carbon, water, waste, pollution and natural resource dependency.

The firms said that CalSTRS already use Trucost data over the FactSet network. Trucost has been helping the investment community to manage environmental risk for over 10 years. Its data has been used to analyse the environmental performance of funds worth over US$2.7trillion, working with clients such as Standard and Poor’s, UBS and Vanguard.

Joppe Coelingh Bennink, FactSet Sales, said, “FactSet strives to give our users access to information from premier firms, so this agreement fits perfectly within our tradition.  Our partnership with Trucost provides FactSet users with a robust and comprehensive environmental data set to let them manage environmental risk alongside traditional financial metrics.”

James Salo, senior vice president, Trucost said: “The current era of natural resource constraints and rising commodity prices combined with the trend towards national policy on ‘polluter pays’ regulations, make it increasingly important to enable mainstream investors to manage environmental risk. And it’s not just about managing risk. Following our work with Newsweek on their Green Ranking of America’s largest companies, we have seen outperformance of almost 10 percent among the top 100 companies versus the S&P500 over the last two years.”

Trucost CEO Richard Mattison said: “Environmental issues will both create winners and losers and change business models. Companies that are more environmentally efficient than their sector peers stand to achieve competitive advantage from reduced environmental costs, security of supply and positive customer perception. Providing Trucost data over the FactSet platform enables investors to identify risk and opportunity by integrating environmental metrics into their traditional holding and fund level analysis.”