Willis Towers Watson and Qontigo launch pioneering STOXX global index series that quantifies companies’ climate transition risk

• Enables investors to address financial risk to company share prices caused by a climate transition by building balanced, mainstream, Paris-aligned portfolios
  
  
• Innovative, proprietary approach looks beyond simple strategies such as carbon exposure
• Major market innovation for CoP26 private finance agenda
  
  

ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Qontigo and Willis Towers Watson launched an innovative family of climate transition indices driven by a next generation methodology that directly quantifies the impact of a Paris-aligned climate transition on equity valuations. The STOXX Willis Towers Watson Climate Transition Indices (CTI) help investors, governments and companies to manage risk, capture opportunities in their portfolios, align with goals of the Paris agreement and work toward net-zero targets.

The CTI enables a more sophisticated way of managing climate risk that looks beyond carbon emissions, by making a forward-looking, bottom-up evaluation of transition risk and opportunity for each company. A proprietary Climate Transition Value at Risk (CTVaR) measure analyzes the impact on projected company cash flows of moving from a business-as-usual scenario — reflecting current policies — to a world where emissions pathways are fully aligned to the goals of the Paris agreement.

By incorporating climate risk explicitly, this innovative approach allows investors to allocate in a robust, transparent and low-cost manner toward firms that will build — and benefit from — a future global economy that values and manages climate risks.

“Investors need a robust framework that can quantify and incorporate the financial impact of climate risk, but this is something that just hasn’t been widely available until now,” said Craig Baker, global chief investment officer, Willis Towers Watson. “We believe understanding this transition, through our Climate Transition Value at Risk methodology, should be one of the biggest sources of alpha across all asset classes over the next few years. Climate change is a systemic, urgent global challenge and will significantly disrupt capital allocations and returns.”

“By curating data from multiple sources, the CTI takes a unique approach from our perspective by refreshing forward-looking company transition risk over time rather than simply using historic carbon emissions data,” said David Nelson, senior director, Climate Transition Analytics, Willis Towers Watson. “While current climate metrics can help to identify outliers, many current approaches to factoring climate risk into investments tend to be simplistic and fall short of accurately identifying their impact on company valuations.”

“Understanding and addressing climate transition risk is essential to investment decisions today,” said Neal Pawar, chief operating officer, Qontigo. “Together with Willis Towers Watson, we leveraged our open architecture to translate the Willis Towers Watson CTVaR model into a transparent, systematic index solution.”

About Willis Towers Watson

Willis Towers Watson (NASDAQ: WLTW) is a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company that helps clients around the world turn risk into a path for growth. With roots dating to 1828, Willis Towers Watson has 45,000 employees serving more than 140 countries and markets. We design and deliver solutions that manage risk, optimize benefits, cultivate talent, and expand the power of capital to protect and strengthen institutions and individuals. Our unique perspective allows us to see the critical intersections between talent, assets and ideas — the dynamic formula that drives business performance. Together, we unlock potential. Learn more at willistowerswatson.com.

About Qontigo

Qontigo is a leading global provider of innovative index, analytics and risk solutions that optimize investment impact. As the shift toward sustainable investing accelerates, Qontigo enables its clients — financial-products issuers, capital owners and asset managers — to deliver sophisticated and targeted solutions at scale to meet the increasingly demanding and unique sustainability goals of investors and asset owners worldwide. Qontigo’s solutions are enhanced by both our collaborative, customer-centric culture, which allows us to create tailored solutions for our clients, and our open architecture and modern technology that efficiently integrate with our clients’ processes. Part of the Deutsche Börse Group, Qontigo was created in 2019 through the combination of Axioma, DAX and STOXX. Headquartered in Eschborn, Germany, Qontigo’s global presence includes offices in New York, London, Zug and Hong Kong.

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