What products does GIIRS offer for Institutional Investors & Investment Advisors?
Investors can rely on GIIRS for independent, comparable, and transparent analysis of social and environmental impact, with the confidence that standards have been developed by an independent Standards Advisory Council and that company and fund data have been collected subject to a rigorous third-party assurance process.
Institutional Investors and Investment Advisors can subscribe to the GIIRS Ratings Database, which contains all current GIIRS Company Impact Ratings and GIIRS Fund Impact Ratings. The GIIRS Ratings Database provides investors and advisors access to:
- Overall Ratings, Stakeholder Level Ratings, and Stakeholder Subcategory Ratings: Companies' or funds' overall rating and their five subcategory ratings (Leadership/Governance, Environment, Community, Employees, and Products/Services), plus companies' or funds' ratings on stakeholder subcategories (Serving those in need, charitable giving/direct service, corporate environmental impact, etc.);
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Benchmarks: Specific metrics that are of greatest interest to investors (carbon footprint, low-income customers served, etc.) and benchmarks for company and fund performance among its peer groups;
- Portfolio Management Tools: Subscribers to GIIRS will have access to tools that allow them to see the effects on their portfolio's social and environmental performance of adding a company or fund to their investment portfolio and to see how a particular company or fund performs in comparison to its peers. Basic subscribers will be able to aggregate data at the level of the rating and subcategory rating, while premium subscribers will be able to aggregate data at the individual metric and indicator level. Subscribers will also have the ability to export this data to excel; and
- Documentation Distribution Service: Premium subscribers will have the ability to request documentation that has been submitted as a part of a company's ratings process. Documentation includes items like environmental audits, product level certifications, employee handbooks, and investor financial reporting.
What value do GIIRS Ratings Create for Institutional Investors & Investment Advisors?
Sophisticated investors and their investment advisors or consultants have their own due diligence and decision making process for investments. As the recent financial markets crisis highlights, ratings products are not a substitute for independence, due diligence, or good investment judgment. GIIRS facilitates the lifecycle of the investment process in three primary ways. By using and/or subscribing to GIIRS data, investors can:
- Access data for a target company or fund that has been collected according to a rigorous and transparent set of independent standards. This reduces their due diligence costs by spending less staff time and money collecting and standardizing data, frees-up the investment team to focus on the critical investment judgments and to determine where further due diligence may be required, and reduces the burden on entrepreneurs to provide the same data to multiple investors in different forms.
- Benchmark social and environmental performance of a prospective investment relative to comparable and independent ratings and indicators for similar investment opportunities by industry, geography, fund type, etc. using the ratings and additional key performance indicators. This provides investment teams with tools to independently confirm their own due diligence judgments as well as their impact claims to investors.
- Track the social and environmental impact of their investments on a comparable basis over the investment lifecycle. This provides investors with the ability to assess ongoing performance relative to other investments in their portfolio, to help portfolio businesses improve social and environmental performance over time, and to easily and systematically report on the actual influence they have had in creating impact through their investment and portfolio management processes.
