The Asian Sustainability Rating (ASR™) is an Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) benchmarking tool developed by Responsible Research.
It is used by responsible investors for benchmarking portfolios and to add a sustainability dimension to investment decision-making and engagement practices. Companies and their stakeholders also use the tool to monitor their progress on sustainability and to review ESG management within business partners and competitors.
Launched in 2009, the ASR™ now covers around 550 listed companies in Asia Pacific, based on free-float weighted market cap. All companies within the universe are included in the ASR™ benchmarking so the final rankings provide insight into sector and country comparisons across Asia, and the results add insight on how ownership structures, size and affiliation of company affects sustainability.
A team of experts in Asian sustainability carefully selected 100 indicators which cover the main elements of ESG risk. We believe all companies within the universe should be addressing all these important factors through disclosure and realistic target setting, irrespective of sector. Some of these issues will be more material in certain sectors than others. Several criteria are categorized as ‘general sustainability issues’ and are used for gaining insight rather than affecting final ASR score. These ‘general’ factors, whilst important starting points for companies, have been found to have no strong positive correlation with sustainability.
Separate ASR™ ‘Sector Rankings’, based on additional industry specific questions, are available on request for a ‘best in class’ selection of companies in several ‘high ESG impact sectors’. This methodology takes industry specific ESG risk materiality into consideration and is developed by the team of sector specialists at Responsible Research, who are actively researching global best practice in sectoral sustainability practices.
Currently disclosure is reviewed on an annual basis but, as companies improve on data collection and communication on sustainability issues, ASR™ will move to more frequent reviews to enable data to swiftly reflect improvements in company sustainability disclosure. Over time the aim of the ASR™ is to engage with companies to collate relevant data, enabling the ASR™ to shift from a disclosure only rating to one that also looks at strategic performance. Going forward the ASR™ will have a function for companies to upload their sustainability disclosure and comment on their rating and potential for improvement.
In order to promote improved sustainability disclosure, some rankings and elements of our methodology are made available to the media and at conferences. Individual company or peer analysis can be provided for companies wishing to know how their competitors are performing on sustainability disclosure. The tool was developed in collaboration with CSR Asia, the leading CSR advisory in Asia. CSR Asia are responsible for company consultancy in relation to the ASR™ scoring. The benchmarking function remains within Responsible Research, in order to prevent any bias in the scoring.
Investors, NGOs and media are also invited to access indicator data. If you would like to know more about the ASR™, provide feedback or support please contact us as info@asiansr.com.
The rights to the methodology and data are owned exclusively by Responsible Research Pte Ltd, an independent ESG research company based in Singapore.
For more information on how to use the ASR tool please visit www.asiansr.com.
Asian Sustainability Rating™
Asian Sustainability Rating™ 2010
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