The R-Factor: Converting ESG and Corporate Governance Data into Investable Insights

Availability of financially material, consistently reported, and comparable ESG data is one of the biggest challenges facing investors across the capital markets. That’s why State Street Global Advisors built the R-Factor, a scoring model that leverages multiple data sources and aligns them to widely accepted, transparent materiality frameworks to generate a unique ESG score for 5,500 global companies. They draw on the materiality framework of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and national/investor-created corporate governance frameworks. R-Factor was built to solve for the data quality challenges in the market, and to remove opaqueness around ESG materiality in the scoring process. It is the only score that is backed by a strong stewardship commitment from an asset manager and is designed to put companies in the driver seat to help create sustainable markets.