The land of data – Dataland offers ESG data for the financial world

In this article you can read

• why the financial industry needs improved ESG data,
• how Dataland is solving the challenge with a data ecosystem
• and which role the Open Telekom Cloud plays in all of this.

Dataland kicks off on January 24 in Frankfurt and runs on the Open Telekom Cloud. But what is Dataland? Who is behind it? Who needs it? And for what? ...

Exploitation of employees, environmentally damaging business or bribery of public decision-makers: in the past, some companies did not take values-based corporate governance very seriously. But a lot has changed in recent years. This also has to do with the fact that more and more companies are required to report on the level of and progress they are making towards their ESG goals. The ESG triad essentially covers three aspects of companies' business activities: environmental behavior, social aspects and corporate governance culture.

Companies' ESG strategies (and the corresponding reports) have been a key aspect of investment decisions, investment recommendations and company valuations in the financial environment for many years. "At Deka, we implement sustainability in all investment processes," reports Ingo Speich, Head of Sustainability & Corporate Governance at Deka Investment, for example.

With the EU Green Deal and the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the topic of sustainability has once again gained further momentum for companies. This not only means that the topic must be anchored in corporate strategies, but also that transparent reporting with comprehensible data is required.

"A major challenge on the financial market is the lack of data quantity and quality, especially for small caps," explains Christoph Benner, CEO of the investment company CHOM CAPITAL. Small caps – that doesn't sound that big. But in the nomenclature of the financial sector, companies with a market capitalization of around €1 billion fall into this category. Ingo Speich from Deka Investment also articulates problems with sustainability data: "It is too expensive, there are data gaps, the quality needs to be improved and, last but not least, we need to free ourselves from usage restrictions".

Binding, up-to-date sustainability data is therefore relevant for investment companies. But banks also need this data in order to meet taxonomy requirements for their reporting. Data is missing, of poor quality and too expensive, as it is currently only sold for profit by a few data aggregators.

On the one side you have the data users, banks and investment companies, and on the opposing side the data owners, i.e., the companies. The latter will receive many requests from institutions asking for their data, however, they lack the resources to handle all requests. Additionally, they lose control over what happens to their data.

Building a data ecosystem as a single source of truth could be an efficient solution that satisfies both sides – and also enables control over the data. Dataland takes on this task as a central data platform.

Dataland is non-profit, purpose-driven and a subsidiary of the Values Foundation. "Dataland will enable organizations to request all the corporate data they need. This data will then flow into a collective dataset and be accessible to all Dataland users. That way, we enable asset managers, banks and other financial market participants to collectively close data gaps, standardize data and share costs. Because the more players that participate, the lower the costs will be for the individual. We are revolutionizing the data market and want to offer an alternative to profit-oriented data aggregators," says Erik Breen, Managing Director of Dataland. A clear vision: the creation of an ecosystem for ESG data.

And this ecosystem needs a technical platform. "This is where Deutsche Telekom's Open Telekom Cloud comes into play. It provides the ecosystem with a modern basis for growth and is itself based on sustainable principles. It is powered by 100 percent renewable energy and relies on open technologies. It is the perfect basis for sovereign data exchange," summarizes Fabian Klose, SVP Cloud Services Sales at T-Systems.

In addition to T-Systems, Dataland has other powerful partners at its side for the implementation of its mission to become the critical infrastructure for sustainability data: d-fine, Experience One and KYT (formerly Concedus). In addition, well-known market players such as Atlas Metrics, the German fund association BVI, CHOM CAPITAL, Deka Investment, Dydon AI, Envoria, Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), Impact Cubed, Metzler Asset Management, PwC Germany, Value Balancing Alliance, VÖB-Services (a subsidiary of the Association of German Public Sector Banks) and WWF Germany are supporting the young company in its market entry.

Data for four different ESG frameworks can currently be requested and supplied via Dataland:

• Pathways to Paris helps to classify selected transformation measures in order to assess a company's progress in line with the Paris Agreement.
• The EU Taxonomy Regulation creates a common language for sustainable economic activities and introduces disclosure requirements for companies and financial market participants.
• The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) creates a systematic, transparent and comparable approach for investors to assess sustainability risks.
• The Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG) obliges companies to identify human rights violations and environmental risks in their supply chains.

However, the platform also has the potential to map any number of use cases in the future, from data on other ESG regulations to complex data such as satellite images. Market participants also have the opportunity to provide their own frameworks.

On January 24, Dataland will be launched with an opening event in Frankfurt. Fabian Klose will represent T-Systems and the Open Telekom Cloud as a participant in a roundtable discussion. "For T-Systems, sustainability and sovereign data exchange are two top issues that we are happy to promote. With the Open Telekom Cloud, we have the right service to operate modern, open data ecosystems for the long-term benefit of all stakeholders."

Further information at www.dataland.com