ASSET4 Introduces Sovereign Supra for Fixed Income

ASSET4 AG released its Sovereign Supra solution allowing users to integrate extra-financial information related to environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) into their analysis of income investments in order to improve performance and manage risk in volatile times.

ASSET4 uses its ESG methodology to monitor and evaluate the ESG performance of countries, local authorities, private and state-owned companies and supranationals — information that is playing a more important role in the creation of sovereign bond indices and products, according to the company’s release.

“During the current financial crisis there has been a flight to safety, which has led to an increase in interest in sovereign bonds. But at the same time investors want more transparency about the entities that make up these bonds, which is why our Sovereign Supra solution is important for today’s market,” stated Peter Ohnemus, president and CEO of ASSET4 in the company’s release. In a statement, Ohnemus claimed that ASSET 4’s solution is the most objective, transparent and flexible product on the market and will enable firms to create a new range of bond indices and products.

The current universe covers 67 countries (foreign sovereigns), 31 local authorities, 91 companies (agency), 35 state-owned companies (government guaranteed) and 30 supranational entities. For each entity approximately 150 ESG key performance indicators (KPIs) are tracked including total CO2 emissions, biodiversity, corruption rank, income inequality and literary rate.

Transparency is built-in, meaning that users will be provided with the values of the KPIs and raw data (publisher, publication data, etc.) for each KPI, as well as the scores for KPIs, categories, pillars and overall entity scores. All scores are computed based on performance and are not absolute but relative to the benchmark defined by the client.

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio