United States : Yesterday ISS Corporate Services, Inc. (ICS), a leading provider of corporate governance, compensation and sustainability services, and NAEM, the largest professional community for corporate environmental, health & safety and sustainability decision-makers, announced a strategic alliance to advance the use of sustainability information that is of growing value to companies and to their investors.

The strategic alliance between two firms that together serve more than 1,500 companies will enable an integrated approach to sustainability data management, both internally through data collection and externally through data dissemination to the broader investment community. ICS has built an internet-based platform through which companies can provide relevant and timely sustainability information to be analyzed for corporate benchmarking and ratings purposes. Within this platform, NAEM will tag selected data as “Green Metrics That Matter” to identify key measurements that drive corporate sustainability performance.

“Corporate issuers collect, monitor and manage a significant amount of sustainability data with respect to their operations, yet it can be difficult to convey the information and sustainability achievements that are of greatest interest to the investor community,” said Jill Lyons, Head of ICS, a MSCI brand. “Our hope is that this collaboration with NAEM will help to develop a standard for reporting meaningful and high-quality data.”

“Our members are experts in how and why sustainability metrics are collected and managed within companies,” said Carol Singer Neuvelt, Executive Director of NAEM. “We are excited to be sharing our knowledge base and practical experience through our alliance with ICS. This is a concrete step towards bridging the divide between the data investors use to evaluate sustainability progress, and the information driving corporate decisions about these efforts.”

ICS and NAEM will initially collaborate on the following:

ICS will seek input from NAEM members for the creation and refinement of ICS’ Sustainability Data Collection Forms, in recognition of NAEM’s expertise and thought leadership,

NAEM will identify a list of tagged “Green Metrics that Matter” that consists of the most relevant data points as determined by its members, and

ICS will provide free internet access to these data collection forms so that companies can enter information on “Green Metrics that Matter” and other sustainability topics.

ICS has already developed a Carbon Data Collection Form, with comment from NAEM experts, and is in the process of developing similar data collection forms addressing a broader set of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. The main objective of these collection forms is to (a) identify for corporate issuers the types of data investors are using when analyzing the sustainability practices of companies; (b) invite corporate issuers to submit their own data on relevant ESG topics and practices; and (c) enable corporate issuers to verify the accuracy and completeness of previously submitted data, and to provide timely updating of this data.