• Precise risk scores for each sector in all countries
• Encompassing labor rights, environmental risks and political risks
• Bottom-up approach to robustly assess inherent ESG risk exposure

Verisk Maplecroft, a global risk analytics business of Verisk, has launched its new Industry Risk Analytics to provide companies, insurers and financial institutions with a new geospatial risk solution that identifies the exposure of 80 sectors to 52 different ESG and political risks across 198 countries. The data can be used to underpin and strengthen analysis of a wide range of risks impacting operations, supply chains and investments globally by offering in-depth insight into how country-level risks vary between industries.

The dataset draws on over 50 of Verisk Maplecroft’s 170+ global risk indices, combining them with proprietary global and local industry risk factors to deliver precise risk scores for each sector in all countries. Issues covered include labour rights, such as modern slavery, child labour, fair wages and working hours; environmental risks, including water stress, climate change vulnerability, pollution, heat stress and natural hazards; and political risks covering corruption, conflict intensity and civil unrest.

The Industry Risk Analytics are the latest innovation from Verisk Maplecroft as it strives to provide global business and finance with the single most comprehensive source of geospatial global risk data and analytics. They form the latest addition to Verisk’s growing suite of sustainability and resilience exposure analytics, which include extreme event models and global geospatial datasets covering the full spectrum of ESG, political, climate and energy transition risks.

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“Providing a universal foundation for ESG and political risk analysis, the Industry Risk Analytics will enable more precise assessment of inherent risk exposures, helping businesses, banks, insurers and investors get a more granular view of industry-specific risks at the operational, supply chain, portfolio, asset and project level,” says Sam Haynes, Head of Risk Analytics at Verisk Maplecroft. “Users can explore how inherent risks vary from place to place and by industry activity, enabling a holistic understanding of locational risk to support smarter, more informed decisions and mitigating actions.”

The methodologies used to create the analytics feature Verisk Maplecroft’s vast array of unstructured, geospatial, expert-derived and structured data, which offer an alternative contextual risk perspective to the analyst assessed, disclosure-based and controversy datasets that are typically used to assess ESG risks. This means both the underlying data and the analytics themselves are independent, scalable and can deliver a robust, universally applicable risk assessment solution.

“The veracity of the top-down mainstream ESG datasets from major ratings providers has come under recent scrutiny,” adds Verisk Maplecroft’s President Matt Moshiri. “This points to a need for a bottom-up approach that can robustly assess inherent ESG risk exposure, alongside dynamic political issues, more accurately than ever before – this is where we aim to make the difference.”

Source: Verisk Maplecroft