News & Research

In the race to net-zero and the era of sustainable investing, indices can have a bigger role than just channeling capital to specific goals. At Qontigo we believe we must engage with index constituents to encourage best practices in climate alignment and explain the impact that climate-related metrics can have on index composition.

Qontigo, a global provider of indices and analytics and part of Deutsche Börse Group, has licensed the STOXX PSBC China A ESG Index to Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC). The index serves as an underlying for an onshore wealth management vehicle launched by PSBC. The index applies an ESG score, exclusionary screens, and incorporates Qontigo’s quantitative portfolio construction tools.

The last two years have been among the most eventful in the blue-chip DAX® index’s three-decade life. Qontigo, which manages the German benchmark and its entire family of indices, has since 2020 pursued DAX’s biggest overhaul since its inception. The aim has been to bolster the quality of constituent companies, bring selection criteria in line with international standards and improve representativeness.

The customized index is an optimized solution that balances multiple investment objectives and uses various inputs, including LGIM’s proprietary ESG data.

Qontigo has licensed the newly launched iSTOXX World Min Vol ESG Index to Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM). The index will be used for a large pension fund mandate. This index is based on STOXX’s broadest equity universe, the STOXX World AC (All Countries), including both Developed and Emerging Markets and incorporates both proprietary ESG data provided by LGIM and data from ISS ESG.

The STOXX® Global 1800 index rebounded from a two-year low last month on investors’ expectations that the Federal Reserve may soon slow down the pace of interest-rate hikes.

Dutch pension fund manager APG, which co-designed the responsible-investment indices with Qontigo, has received an award from Pensioen Pro for its pioneering work following the introduction of the indices.

ESG funds can target very different objectives and their names mean very different things. So, what, in reality, are their overall achievements when it comes to broad sustainability metrics? What active risk are investors taking on to accomplish them? And can optimization help balance sustainability and risk? A new whitepaper from Qontigo examines these matters.

In this paper, our goal is to show how sustainability ETF exposures to a number of sustainability-related factors may vary. It is eminently clear to us that investors with a view about key sustainability features cannot rely on the fund name, but instead need to do more digging into whether their fund meets the required criteria.

This article aims to provide an update on the responsible-investing characteristics of the iSTOXX APG World Responsible Indices, and reaffirm that the process continues to create indices with substantial improvement in sustainability criteria without straying too much from the parent benchmark.

While ETF strategies focusing on the environment and general ESG have captured 39 billion euros this year, little to no money has gone to funds targeting principally social and governance issues, according to data from Qontigo’s Market Intelligence Team.

In September, stocks suffered the worst monthly selloff since March 2020, with the STOXX® Global 1800 index erasing all of its gains from the northern hemisphere’s summer, as central banks around the world pushed ahead with more interest-rate hikes.