Ventures
Fostering Impact and Innovation
EDHEC Business School has been recognised for over 20 years for its expertise in finance.
Beyond its academic pursuits, EDHEC has ventured into the business world with remarkable success. Notably, it launched "Scientific Beta", a smart index provider sold to the Singapore Stock Exchange for over 200 million euros in January 2020.
Following this achievement, EDHEC introduced "Scientific Portfolio" which provides investors with the technology they need to independently analyse and construct equity portfolios from both a financial and extra-financial perspective.
Building on these ventures and reflecting its continuous effort to leverage academic and business expertise to make an impact, EDHEC is now creating Scientific Climate Ratings to bring its unique data and ratings on climate risk to the market.
EDHEC Scientific Climate Ratings
Scientific Climate Ratings (SCR) is a new venture born from EDHEC’s Climate Finance applied research ecosystem. It delivers forward-looking ratings that quantify the financial materiality of climate risks for infrastructure companies and investors worldwide.
Leveraging high-resolution geospatial data, proprietary climate risk models, and the world’s largest financial dataset for infrastructure assets, SCR evaluates both Transition Risks (linked to the shift toward a low-carbon economy) and Physical Risks (arising from climate hazards such as floods, storms, heatwaves, and wildfires). The ratings offer a dual perspective:
- Potential Climate Exposure Ratings assess current exposure to future climate risks under a “continuity” scenario, reflecting the most likely pathway based on today’s global policies and trends.
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Effective Climate Risk Ratings go further by integrating climate risk data into financial valuation models across multiple scenarios — each weighted by its probability of occurrence — to estimate the financial effects of climate-related risks through 2035 and 2050.
While initially focused on infrastructure, SCR will soon extend its methodology to the listed equities segment, applying the same scientific rigor and forward-looking approach to a broader set of financial assets.
Scientific Climate Ratings aims to set a new standard in climate risk management — driving informed and responsible decision-making for a more resilient future.
Scientific Portfolio, an EDHEC venture
Scientific Portfolio (an EDHEC Venture), the new FinTech venture originated from EDHEC Business School’s applied research ecosystem, develops portfolio analysis tools and metrics to help investors integrate financial and non-financial information into portfolio management. Scientific Portfolio proudly carries EDHEC" impactful academic heritage and aspires to provide investors with the technology they need to independently analyse and construct equity portfolios from both a financial and extra-financial perspective.
Climate finance research at Scientific Portfolio focuses on two research priorities. The first is to identify the most effective strategies and levers for maximising an asset owner" contribution to climate change mitigation – e.g., which exclusion screens are the most consistent, how to allocate capital between and within sectors, for which type of company is engagement a priority, and to measure this contribution over time. The second priority is to quantify a portfolio" exposure to climate risks, estimate losses associated with different climate scenarios, and finally develop optimisation methods to manage these risks. These two priorities correspond to the double materiality approach promoted by Scientific Portfolio.