Rise in sustainable investing lifts demand for new data

One trendy investment approach reinforces another

As if the hype around alternative data wasn’t high enough, a boom in sustainable investing is fuelling even greater demand for unorthodox sources of insights into companies.

And in this case, there are reasons to believe the hype. Alternative data has yet to prove its mettle as a gateway to hidden signals of alpha, but for investors picking stocks based on their environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials it represents a unique trove of information about the kinds of things companies