Finance Monthly September 2021 Edition

61 www.finance-monthly.com INVESTMENT - ALT-DATA COLLECTION how? How do I collect these large amounts of public data from the web? How do I make sense of and analyse it? Well, automated data collection tools can help tap into those publicly available data pools. Such tools help to gather information and relate it back to those groups that need it to guide their predictive insights. Collecting publicly available images, statistics, social media posts, news articles, etc. enables investors to gain a much more holistic view of an organisation’s ESG picture. Investors can also simply get consumable information by accumulating their own ESG alt-data, which is useful for reporting progress to stakeholders who lack in-depth financial services knowledge. For, example, it’s preferable to say, “the organisations we’ve invested in have 20% more female employees than the sector average” than quoting an opaque figure, by saying, for example, “the organisations we’ve invested in have an average ESG score of 89.3”. Given that 97% of information specialists in the UK and US financial services sectors report that ESG data is used in some or all strategy decisions, there’s no doubt that the importance of ESG alt-data in financial decision- making will continue to grow for many years to come. Toget thebest possible results, investors should take advantage of the new data- gathering opportunities on offer – including online data collection tools. With such platforms, calculating investment returns, future growth opportunities, and possible profits has become much easier and significantly faster. ESG Factors now at the Heart of Investment Sector Decision Making Meeting ESG Criteria is increasingly important for investors. Recent Insights demonstrate a shift towards non- financial aspects of investments. Research carried out by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Bright Data. The research gathered insights from 100 respondents from finance, banking and insurance across US and UK that held positions including CDO (Chief Data Scientist), CTO, Head of Data, CIO and those who report to them. *In organisations that incorporate ESG data into business strategy