Waters Rankings 2025: Best ESG data provider—FactSet

Overview

Investors are increasingly buying more ESG data to satisfy a growing number of ESG workflows, including meeting new regulatory disclosure requirements. Sophisticated ESG strategies typically require content sets from multiple vendors spanning raw metrics, ratings or scores, climate analytics, business exposure and more―all covering multiple asset classes. This presents the buy side with significant data management challenges. Investors struggle to connect content sets together, integrate them into the investment process, and customize their investment approach.

The solution  

FactSet focuses on providing users with all data required for a comprehensive ESG investment approach and eliminates blind spots. It supports flexible, scalable portfolio construction, analysis, and reporting workflows. Data connects to a single security/entity master and is available via FactSet Workstation, feeds and APIs.

FactSet’s product offering includes:

• Company and fund reported metrics
• Carbon diagnostics
• External stakeholder information (via Truvalue)
• Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) analysis and AI-detected corporate sustainability discussion
• ESG thematic involvement
• Green, social, and sustainability (GSS) bonds
• Third-party data from MSCI, Sustainalytics, ISS, and others

Differentiators  

FactSet’s differentiators include:

• Truvalue Scores & Spotlights detect positive and negative company-focused events mapped to the SASB’s 26 categories, tracking over 300,000 public and private entities across more than 250,000 sources and 38 languages globally.
• Carbon Diagnostics provides a data-driven approach to climate transition risk with financed emissions and scenario analysis across asset classes.
• Identifying business exposure mapped to FactSet-maintained ESG themes for over 49,000 global companies and extensive supply chain relationships
• An extensive library of connected third-party ESG content

Recent goals

• Launched FactSet’s ESG Select Workstation (ESG Hub), an open platform that combines third-party and proprietary ESG data through FactSet’s platform and support model
• Released FactSet Carbon Diagnostics, which provides a climate transition risk toolkit and actionable insights into firms’ carbon exposure
• Released ESG Thematic Involvement, which maps as-reported revenue exposure and business involvement to over 130 FactSet-maintained ESG themes, allowing users to assess a company’s sustainability exposure

Product roadmap

FactSet is focused on expanding its breadth of content, particularly physical risk, market signals, and company as-reported regulatory data. It plans to further enable sustainable disclosure requirements by expanding its as-reported offering―including SASB and Global Reporting Initiative metrics―and growing the private asset coverage in Carbon Diagnostics, while developing its physical risk solution, in partnership with Emmi. FactSet also plans to expand its coverage beyond existing topics to emerging themes such as autonomous vehicles, AI enablement, and blockchain.