Morningstar Sustainalytics Acquires Property-Level Climate Risk Data Provider Aquantix

Aquantix's expertise in assessing physical climate risks and advanced technology and modelling capabilities will strengthen Morningstar Sustainalytics' Climate Capabilities and Solutions

TORONTO, June 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Morningstar Sustainalytics, a leading global provider of ESG research, ratings, and data, announced it has acquired Aquantix, a Montreal-based technology company that develops and delivers property-level climate risk data services for the real estate and mortgage lending industries. Aquantix's AI-powered models quantify the impacts of climate change on half a billion residential and commercial assets in 180 countries. With the demand for climate-related data accelerating among real estate investors, banks, and lenders, Aquantix's technology and expertise will enable Morningstar Sustainalytics to help these key stakeholders assess climate-related risks in the global real estate space. 

To support more financial market stakeholders address the wide-ranging effects of climate change, Morningstar Sustainalytics has been investing in talent, technology and tools in order to rapidly expand its climate capabilities and solutions. Today, Morningstar Sustainalytics' Climate Solutions team stands at more than 90 professionals, covering a variety of disciplines. With a skilled in-house team, combined with technology and analytics from Aquantix, Morningstar Sustainalytics will offer a range of market-leading climate solutions to empower investors, banks, lenders, and companies to make more informed climate-related decisions.

Morningstar Sustainalytics will also benefit from Aquantix's strategic partnership with Teranet Inc., a global leader in modern registry solutions, real estate ecosystem platforms and data and analytics. Canada-based Teranet integrates Aquantix's property-level climate risk data into its offerings to provide federally regulated financial institutions and regulators with market-leading data solutions. Collaborating with Teranet, Morningstar Sustainalytics will deliver high-quality real estate climate data solutions to decision-makers in real estate, banking, lending, and insurance.

"Real estate is an asset class directly impacted by increasing physical climate risks," said Senior Vice President of Climate Solutions at Morningstar Sustainalytics, Azadeh Sabour. "With the addition of the Aquantix team and their technology, we are fast-tracking our asset-level data collection and developing innovative climate-focused solutions for the commercial and residential real estate market. We are excited to bring the Aquantix team into the Morningstar Sustainalytics family and look forward to collaborating with Teranet."

"Banks, lenders and real estate asset managers require a comprehensive understanding of the impact that climate change has on their portfolio of real estate investments," said Morningstar Sustainalytics' Commercialization Director of Real Estate Solutions, Toby Messier. "Aquantix fills this void by capturing millions of climate-related data points and providing meaningful property risk metrics that measure the estimated asset damage from emerging climate events across various time frames and scenarios. By joining Morningstar Sustainalytics, we are in an even stronger position to scale and help more real estate financiers reach their broader climate change goals."

For more information on Sustainalytics' Climate Solutions, please visit here.

Morningstar Sustainalytics is a leading ESG research, ratings and data firm that supports investors around the world with the development and implementation of responsible investment strategies. For 30 years, the firm has been at the forefront of developing high-quality, innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of global investors. Today, Morningstar Sustainalytics works with hundreds of the world's leading asset managers and pension funds who incorporate ESG and corporate governance information and assessments into their investment processes. The firm also works with hundreds of companies and their financial intermediaries to help them consider sustainability in policies, practices, and capital projects. With 17 offices globally, Morningstar Sustainalytics has more than 1,500 staff members, including more than 500 analysts with varied multidisciplinary expertise across more than 40 industry groups. For more information, visit www.sustainalytics.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is used in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on our current expectations about future events or future financial performance. Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain, and often contain words such as "may," "could," "expect," "intend," "plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," or "continue." These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause the events we discuss not to occur or to differ significantly from what we expect. For us, these risks and uncertainties include, among others, failing to maintain and protect our brand, independence, and reputation; liability related to cybersecurity and the protection of confidential information, including personal information about individuals; liability for any losses that result from an actual or claimed breach of our fiduciary duties or failure to comply with applicable securities laws; compliance failures, regulatory action, or changes in laws applicable to our credit ratings operations, or our investment advisory, ESG, and index businesses; failing to respond to technological change, keep pace with new technology developments, or adopt a successful technology strategy; the failure to recruit, develop, and retain qualified employees; inadequacy of our operational risk management and business continuity programs in the event of a material disruptive event, including an outage of our database, technology-based products and services or network facilities; failing to differentiate our products and services and continuously create innovative, proprietary, and insightful financial technology solutions; prolonged volatility or downturns affecting the financial sector, global financial markets, and global economy and its effect on our revenue from asset-based fees and credit ratings business; failing to maintain growth across our businesses in today's fragmented geopolitical, regulatory and cultural world; liability relating to the information and data we collect, store, use, create, and distribute or the reports that we publish or are produced by our software products; the failure of acquisitions and other investments to be efficiently integrated and produce the results we anticipate; the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic and government actions in response thereto on our business, financial condition, and results of operations; challenges faced by our non-U.S. operations, including the concentration of data and development work at our offshore facilities in China and India; our indebtedness could adversely affect our cash flows and financial flexibility; and the failure to protect our intellectual property rights or claims of intellectual property infringement against us. A more complete description of these risks and uncertainties can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K.

If any of these risks and uncertainties materialize, our actual future results and other future events may vary significantly from what we expect. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events.

SOURCE Morningstar Sustainalytics

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