The U.S. American business and financial services company Moody’s has launched a tool for generating environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores for public and private small to medium-sized businesses (hereinafter “SMBs”). According to Moody’s press release, financial institutions, companies and customers would now be able to perform their portfolio and risk management by tracking ESG risk across global supply chains. This would “help investors and companies […] when identifying and analyzing ESG risks and opportunities.”

This new tool is specifically designed to identify ESG risks of SMBs. Until now, companies and investors had to invest considerable time and effort when making such investigations because they had to compile and evaluate data on ESG risks for each SMB individually. According to Moddy’s press release, its database would allow to see ESG scores of roughly 140 million companies worldwide. The new tool – and any similar tools in the future – might put SMBs further under pressure to identify and address their ESG risks in order to remain attractive to investors and clients (as part of their production chain).