The LSE Directory / Data providers
MSCI ESG Research LLC is the ESG data and ratings business of MSCI Inc., operating as an independent provider of environmental, social and governance data, reports and ratings delivered to clients on a subscription basis under published methodologies. Its core product, MSCI ESG Ratings, scores more than 17,000 issuers and roughly a million securities worldwide on an industry-relative letter scale from AAA down to CCC, grouped into Leaders (AAA, AA), Average (A, BBB, BB) and Laggards (B, CCC) bands. Alongside ratings, the unit produces raw ESG data, climate metrics and scenario analysis, controversy screening, and ESG fund ratings, distributed through data feeds, the MSCI ESG Data API, the cloud-based MSCI ONE platform, MSCI ESG Manager, and third-party channels such as WRDS. MSCI ESG Research LLC is itself registered with the SEC as an investment adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and by its own description does not distribute financial instruments, execute trades, or manage client accounts. The methodology is rules-based rather than disclosure-scored: for each company MSCI first identifies the financially material ESG issues for its GICS sub-industry, then measures exposure to and management of those specific risks relative to industry peers, so two companies in different sectors are never compared on the same checklist. This single-materiality, investor-risk framing (does ESG performance threaten the company's own financials) differs from double-materiality approaches that also weigh a company's impact on the outside world, and it underpins MSCI's parallel ESG fund ratings, climate value-at-risk analytics, and its family of MSCI ESG equity indexes used for benchmarking and passive fund construction. Its client base is concentrated among large institutional allocators, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and asset managers, who use the ratings for portfolio construction, risk oversight, engagement and regulatory reporting; MSCI states its ESG ratings and research are used by more than 1,300 institutional investors globally, including 46 of the top 50 asset managers by size. MSCI ESG Ratings traces its lineage to 1999, when MSCI began assessing sustainability risk through legacy raters it later folded in: KLD, Innovest, IRRC and GMI Ratings. MSCI Inc. acquired RiskMetrics Group (which owned the KLD, Innovest and IRRC research) in 2010, bought GMI Ratings outright in 2014, and added Zurich-based climate analytics firm Carbon Delta in 2019 to build out its climate value-at-risk capability. The parent, MSCI Inc., traces its own origin to 1968 when Capital International began publishing international equity indices, was licensed and rebranded by Morgan Stanley in 1986, and became independently listed on the NYSE after its 2007 IPO. MSCI Inc. is headquartered at 7 World Trade Center in New York, is led by chief executive Henry Fernandez, and reported 2024 revenue of 2.86 billion dollars. MSCI rolled out ESG Ratings model version 5.0 in the first half of 2026, its most significant methodology overhaul in years. The update shifts scoring weight away from rewarding written policies and disclosure toward measurable, financially material performance outcomes, reduces the scoring impact of indirect and already-concluded controversies, standardizes how sustainability targets are scored, and adds more than 200 new underlying data points. MSCI has said the change reprices ratings for roughly 37 percent of covered issuers and moves about 9.5 percent of MSCI Fund ESG Ratings, though it expects no fund to shift by more than one letter grade.
