Independent asset consulting firm, Makao Investments, has launched a new stand-alone sustainability analytical tool backed by Danish expertise with Public Trust as inaugural client.
Makao signed up as the first Australasian licensee of the Copenhagen-based business, Matter, to offer local investors the ability to review portfolios across more than 500 sustainability metrics as well as for its own research purposes.
Founded in 2017, Matter technology scrutinises a range of corporate and financial datasets to assess companies, investments, portfolios, indices etc according to sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.
The Danish platform, part-owned by the Nasdaq, uses machine-learning, natural language processing and other techniques to interrogate the data, allowing investors to see how portfolios align with carbon exposure or reporting frameworks such as the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures or the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In a statement, John Horrell, Makao co-founder, said Matter would provide NZ clients with a “holistic and consistent view of a total portfolio” exposure to sustainability metrics.
“It will also allow us to provide an additional layer of due diligence in analysing manager portfolios as part of our manager research process. In light of the ongoing debates about greenwashing, we believe access to quality data is crucial,” Horrell said.
Public Trust, also a consulting client of Makao, will be first to apply the Matter tool across its investment portfolio. The government-owned trustee, licensed supervisor and custody provider reported about $1.1 billion under management in its investment portfolio as at June 30 last year: comprising $284 million in the government-guaranteed ‘common fund’ and $832 million in the Public Trust Investment Service (of which about $270 million is administered on the NZX Wealth Technologies platform); roughly 30 per cent of the group’s investment book is held in Vanguard passive funds.
Public Trust also acts as licensed supervisor for about $90 billion of fund money, including multiple KiwiSaver schemes, most of which is likely subject to new climate-reporting obligations due to file for the first time next year.
Noah Schiltknecht, who co-founded Makao with fellow ex Russell Investments NZ consultant Horrell in 2019, said the Matter service would appeal to a broad range of local investors.
“Matter will allow us to map corporate revenues and, importantly, capital expenditure to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in investment portfolios,” Schiltknecht said in the release. “Our ESG and impact reporting services will be offered to all asset owners in New Zealand. We can provide this as an add-on solution to investors that may be working with a different consulting firm for investment advice.”
Matter currently advises on €2 trillion of investments on behalf of institutions including Nasdaq (which bought its stake in 2020), BNP Paribas Asset Management and Saxo.
Last week the group also revealed a deal to provide ESG analytics through another company in the Nasdaq group, eVestment – the “largest institutional investment database in the world, covering USD 52 trillion in assets under management”, according to a release.