FinanceMap is an online, publicly available platform by global climate-risk think tank InfluenceMap which examines the financial sector through a climate lens. Its objectives are to give asset owners and other key stakeholders insights into how the financial sector is performing on climate change and to drive improvement within the sector by providing benchmarking information.
FinanceMap currently provides two primary streams of analysis: Asset Managers and the Finance and Climate Change project, which can be accessed via the menu bar.
FinanceMap is produced and managed by London-based climate-risk think tank InfluenceMap. Our portfolio Paris Alignment scores have been developed in cooperation with data partner 2 Degrees Investing Initiative. The FinanceMap team works closely with asset owners, asset managers and financial data providers to ensure that the platform is accurate and representative of reality. FinanceMap’s work is funded by EIT Climate-KIC and the KR Foundation.
FinanceMap's Asset Managers project applies the market-leading Paris Agreement Capital Transition Assessment (PACTA) methodology to a universe of around 30,000 equity funds to assess the alignment of portfolios with the Paris Agreement. This analysis in turn produces Paris Alignment scores for 1,400 asset managers globally, by creating an aggregate of the funds managed by each.
The platform also provides metrics on investor engagement with companies on climate, using a methodology developed by the FinanceMap team in consultation with leading global asset managers. Additionally, we gather metrics on the filing and voting behavior of asset managers on climate-relevant shareholder resolutions. This methodology is benchmarked against the 2020 UK Stewardship Code published by the UK's Financial Reporting Council.
For a full methodology of FinanceMap's Asset Managers project, please refer to the Methodology page.
Finance and Climate Change, released in March 2022, is a comprehensive assessment of the world's 30 largest listed financial institutions on climate change, comparing top-level climate policies and targets to actual climate-related financing and policy lobbying activities. The research was released in the form of a report, with the accompanying platform allowing in-depth analysis of each financial institution assessed.
FinanceMap’s assessment of asset management portfolios begins at the level of investment funds. The research seeks to identify all equity funds worldwide with over $10 million in net asset value. These funds and their portfolios are allocated to the asset managers which manage them. FinanceMap assesses asset managers at the level of the highest parent financial group, including all subsidiary asset managers under the parent. An asset manager’s portfolio is defined as the aggregate portfolio of all of its funds’ portfolio holdings.
In mapping out the asset management sector, FinanceMap identifies approximately 30,000 equity funds managed by over 1,400 asset managers globally.
This research uses the most recent fund shareholding data available from the Refinitiv Lipper database, as of the date of latest update. Where quarterly data is unavailable, the system carries forward the shareholdings from the last disclosure.
In practice, this means that FinanceMap's holdings data derives from a number of disclosure sources, which may be mandatory (e.g. US SEC 13-F filings applying to asset managers with more than US $100M under management) or voluntary. These disclosures may vary by region, fund, and asset manager.
FinanceMap’s portfolio alignment metric is based on the Paris Agreement Capital Transition Assessment (PACTA) methodology. This tool considers the forecasted real-economy activities of the companies held by the portfolio. It compares these real-economy activities over a five-year forward-looking timespan to a Paris-aligned evolution of similar assets’ production as prescribed by the IEA Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE). This gives an assessment of a portfolio's Paris alignment at the level of specific production technologies. FinanceMap currently covers production in four sectors with significant climate risk: automotive, electric power, upstream oil and gas production, and coal mining.
FinanceMap implements a method to calculate Sector and Portfolio Paris Alignment (PA) Scores from the PACTA technology-level Paris alignment results. Each Sector PA Score is a weighted average of the technology-level alignments within that sector. Similarly, the Portfolio PA Score is a weighted average of the Sector PA Scores.
For an in-depth elaboration of FinanceMap's portfolio Paris alignment methodology, please refer to the Methodology page.
FinanceMap analysis uses the IEA Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE), which provides a pathway for a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C by the end of the century.
To assess how aligned a portfolio's corporate holdings are with the Paris Agreement, PACTA compares the held companies' future production with a Paris-aligned roadmap which lays out production quantity pathways at the technology level within each sector. For example, our analysis of the automotive sector considers three technologies: internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, hybrids, and electric vehicles (EVs). The roadmap used by FinanceMap, the IEA NZE, currently only provides technology-level pathways granular enough for this analysis in the automotive, electric power, and fossil fuel extraction sectors. As a result, FinanceMap's portfolio analysis is limited to these sectors.
FinanceMap is working to expand this coverage in the future in order to include additional climate-relevant sectors in our analysis.
A fund’s Paris Alignment score is calculated on the basis of the shareholdings of the fund. An asset manager’s overall Portfolio Paris Alignment is analyzed by compiling the holdings of all its managed funds to create an aggregate portfolio. This aggregate portfolio is then scored on its Paris Alignment.
The asset manager’s aggregate Portfolio Paris Alignment is therefore not directly calculated as a weighted average of its funds’ Paris Alignment scores.
The current FinanceMap research focuses on listed equity holdings. The FinanceMap team intends to incorporate analysis of corporate bond holding data in future releases.
FinanceMap's methodology to measure investor stewardship processes on climate was developed in consultation with several of the world's leading asset managers and uses key aspects of the UK Financial Reporting Council's 2020 Stewardship Code. The Stewardship Code was chosen to benchmark stewardship quality as it provides an ambitious framework and detailed definitions of what constitutes effective stewardship. FinanceMap defines stewardship as the combination of investor engagement and voting. Here, engagement refers to all investor actions undertaken to influence the management strategy of the companies they own including: private communications with corporate management and appointed advisors; questions at AGMs/other company meetings; comments on the company in the media or public fora; escalation and the shareholder resolution process (filing, voting behaviour). FinanceMap also assesses how an investor is voting for climate at company AGMs.
FinanceMap’s methodology breaks the stewardship process down into a set of sub-activities and looks for evidence associated with these across publicly available data sources. Further details can be found in the methodology, available here.
Climate-relevance categorization of shareholder resolutions is based on the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5°C and its concluded need for “rapid and far-reaching transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.” FinanceMap scored voting on any resolution where the intent and likely outcome is consistent with this IPCC stated need. For example, a resolution requesting a utility company to increase its renewable energy production would be considered "climate-relevant". A resolution where any climate-impact would be indirect or unclear, for example, requesting a company to disclose on ESG, is not classed as "climate-relevant". The voting data is drawn from asset managers' disclosures to the US Security Exchange Commission (SEC), asset manager websites (including third-party websites they link to), directly from the asset managers, and through specialist voting data provider ProxyInsight.
FinanceMap looked at a population of around 250 ESG and other potential climate-related resolutions filed in 2018 and prioritized 56 of these as deemed climate-relevant as measured against the IPCC benchmark. This was repeated over 2019-2020, and InfluenceMap identified 56 resolutions in 2019, 60 resolutions in 2020, and 45 resolutions in 2021. The full list of resolutions assessed is available here.
For any further inquiries or questions, please refer to our Methodology or contact us at financemap@influencemap.org.
