ESG now a third of MioTech’s A.I. business

MioTech, ESG 101

digfin group, ESG now a third of MioTech’s A.I. business,  September 9, 2019.

MioTech builds A.I.-based solutions to help buy sides get insight from data analytics, and to help sell-side research departments and private banks’ relationship managers tell data-driven stories. It bases its service on building a library of cross-references (a “knowledge graph”) around a multitude of data points on Asian companies. The idea is to use big-data correlations to spot patterns....

The hard part is that, first, there is little relevant data available. “There are 3,700 listed companies in China, but fewer than 10 percent publish sustainability reports,” Tu said. MioTech tries to use big-data correlations to add insight, such as looking at whether companies have been fined for labor or environmental breaches, or if they come from provinces with track records of, say, chemical spills, or if there are red flags in shareholding structures. 

The second challenge is that this data, direct or indirect, is rarely structured (machine-readable). Instead it might be in the form of a government website’s PDF, say. MioTech uses processes such as natural-language processing and image recognition to enable a machine to make sense of such unstructured documents. “It gets easier with enough training data,” Tu said. 

The third challenge is defining data. Tu says the company tries to rely on broad categorizations such as European accounting standards, but it’s an imperfect fit. “It’s still early when it comes to industry usage of ESG standards,” he said.

吳和懋，它揭露中國不想說的事，新數據偵探商機衝五百億，商業周刊，第1697期

為了體驗另類數據的威力，商周在香港AI新創妙盈科技（MioTech）提供下，獨家取得中國五大城市最新的衛星圖像，以空汙最典型指標二氧化氮分布濃度，以及工業區紅外線熱成像，以另類數據檢視中國目前的復工真相。... 

「因為ESG已經有了國際的共同標準，」涂鑒彧說，這讓他們能夠集中火力，累積出ESG亞洲第一的數據量。在大中華區，妙盈的守備範圍高達八十萬家的企業資訊，遠高於國際同業摩根士丹利MSCI涵蓋約六百家，也因此獲得歐陸最大主權基金、歐洲知名投行的青睞。 

另一位創辦人兼技術長劉濤則解釋，企業的ESG評比主要能應用在四個面向：一是讓投資人選擇永續經營的標的，二是控制風險，三是為品牌形象做企業自評，四是符合法規。 

一般投資銀行只能靠幾位分析師蒐集特定公司資料，一旦研究發表後就不再更新。但有了AI加持，數據就像滾雪球一樣累積，「數據越好，速度與準確就越高，」劉濤說。 

「傳統的投資人未來只有三種選擇：一是擁抱量化取向的另類數據，二是追隨指數消極投資，三是乾脆回家不玩，」管理顧問公司Opimas執行長馬瑞茲（Octavio Marenzi）說。在數據為王的時代，掌握資訊與AI已不再是加分，而是進場投資的基本條件。