A Large Bank Gets Ahead of the Pack with Robust Sustainability Tools for Its Retail Investors

Sustainability issues continue to gain attention, and both institutional and retail investors are looking to learn more about a company's environmental, social and governance stance before adding them to their portfolios. This large North American bank saw an opportunity to provide ESG data on its website for self-directed retail investors and professional advisors to enable these clients to evaluate the ESG ratings of individual equities and ETFs alongside more traditional fundamental and pricing data.

The retail investor team at the bank responsible for the client website wanted to capture a first-mover advantage and get to market quickly with top-quality sustainability features. The vision was to create capabilities for two types of users: (1) active traders and professional advisors, and (2) novice investors. Each track would have screening dashboards with custom, guided and predefined options. The predefined screens, for example, would focus on different sustainability categories, objectives and values.

Given the high importance of this initiative and the need to get to market as soon as possible, members of the retail investor team began to look for a reputable third-party firm they could work with to design and implement the needed web tools.

Pain Points

The retail investor team did not have the bandwidth to take on this initiative on their own and wanted to find a firm that could:

• Create web tools that help self-directed investors and professional advisors evaluate the ESG ratings of individual equities and ETFs, along with a comprehensive picture of the sustainability risks and opportunities surrounding the investments.
• Let users see how a company performs under each of the E, S and G pillars and compare the rating of a company to its stock price and industry peers.
• Present details in a compelling way to help users clearly understand the information to make informed investment decisions.
• Have the ESG features integrate seamlessly into the bank’s web and mobile platforms.
• Provide options to view the content in both English and French to support the bank's clients in Canada.
• In a recent survey conducted by S&P MI, 84% of self-directed sustainability-focused investors said they would consider reallocating investments if they had access to sustainability metrics and understood the impact of their investments.^[1]

Team members reached out to S&P Global Market Intelligence to learn more about the firm's capabilities.

The Solution

Market Intelligence representatives described how Fincentric, a unit within Market Intelligence, builds customized web capabilities that provide the tools investors need to navigate the complexities of global financial markets. This includes presenting high-impact ESG data for use alongside pricing, fundamental, sector and location information. Fincentric l specialists follow a highly consultative approach to help companies anticipate their end client needs and then design capabilities that are both intuitive and insightful. The specialists have the expertise, data and infrastructure to create solutions that are scalable, relying on a series of shared engineering systems that are leveraged across clients, resulting in better integration, richer functionality and faster time to market. The Fincentric solution would provide the retail investor team with:

	Cutting edge digital technology	Fincentric is at the forefront of digital technology and innovation in the financial services industry. The group combines the latest user interface (UI) technologies with advanced architectural standards for custom user experiences. Highly modular and lightweight interfaces are integrated with exhaustive user analytics and a sophisticated rules engine for any level of optimization, segmentation or personalization. The scale and leverage of Fincentric’s own SaaS-based custom-built tech platform delivers high-quality data aggregation and enrichment in a fraction of the time and cost a ground-up solution would require.
	Access to a team of innovators	A highly experienced cadre of innovators are at the forefront of emerging technology developments in the financial services industry and can conceptualize and deliver cutting-edge investor and advisor digital experiences to keep companies ahead of the pack.
	The backing of financial data experts	Fincentric handles 4,000+ inbound data feeds from 1,500+ unique sources in a variety of formats, plus clients’ proprietary data. They have a specialized team of design experts that create unique financial data visualizations and interfaces and manage an extensive library of 250+ existing capabilities services. A deep knowledge of the nuances of each dataset and how they work together gives clients an unrivaled advantage when it comes to connecting the dots and providing essential insights investors need.
	A capabilities library	A deep library of existing capabilities serves as the foundation for new implementations. These core capabilities include charting, screening, messaging and portfolios, which can be configured to meet customer-specific requirements and significantly decrease time to market.
	Creative designs	The team creates unique financial data visualizations and interfaces through a deep understanding of the underlying data, making information approachable, usable and insightful. The team collaborates with clients to create innovative user experiences for the display of complex data, helping novice to professional investors make more informed decisions.
	A suite of integrated capabilities	The integrated capabilities include: Screeners to identify companies based on specific ESG criteria. Data visualization tools to easily communicate complex data relationships and data-driven insights. Interactive charting to uncover relationships between different types of data. ESG-tagged news and events to keep up to date on market developments. SmartText to provide narratives and informative context to better understand the data. Portfolio analysis to look at the performance of different groupings of companies.

Key Benefits

Members of the retail investor team saw that Fincentric could provide the high-quality online experience today’s investors expect to help drive the bank's acquisition, retention and upsell strategies. They engaged Fincentric to quickly develop custom sustainability insight features that would bring the data to life and give the bank a leadership position in the market. The bank was able to benefit from having:

• With over 30+ years of experience working with some of the largest financial institutions in the industry, along with a cadre of innovators to collaborate with and deliver cutting-edge ideas to escalate the bank's digital sustainability capabilities.
• A partner with a deep understanding of how financial datasets work together to create a user experience that combines ESG data with other financial metrics to make the information approachable and insightful to help build client loyalty.
• Speed to market with cutting-edge deliverables that are highly scalable and can seamlessly integrate with the bank’s web and mobile platforms. 
• Comprehensive offerings for both novice and experienced investors available in English and French that are educational and enable users to view overall ESG ratings and compare the rating of any company to its stock price and industry peers. The features include:
  • Productivity-enhancing screening tools for users to establish sustainability and financial criteria to narrow investment choices. The data can be displayed in a custom screener for knowledgeable investors or in a streamlined screener for novice investors that leads them through a small questionnaire that incorporates educational content and quick-select options at each step.
  • A range of user analytical tools to identify industry leaders based on long-term risks, such as climate change, human capital, corporate governance, board diversity and more, plus stay informed of industry-specific business issues that may create significant risks and opportunities.

^{[1] S&P Global Market Intelligence. (2023). Survey conducted over 8 countries: UK, USA, France, Germany, Singapore, China, Canada, and Australia.}