S&P Global’s sustainability-focused business unit S&P Global Sustainable1 announced the launch of its new United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) Screening Dataset, a new solution designed to help investment professionals, banks, and corporates assess alignment with the UNGC Principles.
Launched in 2000, the UNGC is a voluntary corporate sustainability initiative involving more than 20,000 companies across 160 countries, committing to operate responsibly in line with 10 sustainability principles that cover four areas, including human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption.
The new dataset has been applied to a proprietary universe of approximately 16,500 companies globally, with coverage expected to expand to an estimated 24,000 companies, the company said.
According to the company, the dataset combines two key evidence streams designed to identify potential misalignment with the UNGC’s principles covering human rights, labor, environmental protection, and anti-corruption. The Controversy Screening component tracks corporate controversies linked to one or more UNGC principles, while the Business Involvement Screening component identifies companies generating revenues from specific controversial products.
S&P Global Sustainable1 said that the dataset leverages proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning models to systematically identify, classify, and quantify ESG and business risks. The models continuously screen millions of public sources worldwide, including news outlets, NGOs, regulators, and other stakeholders across multiple languages, to detect emerging risk incidents in near real time.
The AI-generated insights are subsequently reviewed and contextualized by the S&P Global Sustainable1 Controversy Research team, enhancing the accuracy, consistency, and decision-usefulness of the risk indicators for investors.
Together with the launch, S&P Global Sustainable1 published a white paper based on the dataset, which found that misalignment in companies is most frequently linked to human rights-related controversies and identified environmental impacts and corruption-related issues as significant sources of controversy-driven risk.
The company added that by integrating these risk indicators into portfolio construction and ongoing oversight, investors can more consistently identify elevated exposure; engage companies from a clearer baseline of evidence and strengthen accountability expectations aligned with the UNGC principles.
Thomas Yagel, Head of Sustainable1 at S&P Global Energy said:
“The UNGC Screening Dataset provides clear and actionable UNGC alignment labels, enabling investors to integrate S&P Global Sustainable1 insights into their decision-making, portfolio construction and ongoing risk oversight.”
