Kestrel is an Infrastructure Finance Intelligence company focused on fixed income markets.

We transform fragmented infrastructure, sustainability, resilience, and financial disclosures into structured intelligence that supports investment research, sustainable finance, portfolio analysis, reporting, and compliance workflows.

We are a team with deep, nuanced understandings of how public infrastructure projects are financed and delivered. We provide actionable intelligence on infrastructure characteristics with our innovative solutions.

By supporting both issuers and investors, we maintain a unique perspective on the full lifecycle of infrastructure finance.

Kestrel Sustainability Intelligence™ is our offering for municipal bonds. Sustainability Intelligence transforms infrastructure, sustainability, resilience, and financial disclosures into structured intelligence for fixed income investors.

Drawing on Kestrel’s analysis of more than 17,000 municipal bond series and more than $3.2 trillion of infrastructure financing, the platform evaluates the sustainability, resilience and impact characteristics of bond-financed activities using sector-specific best practices and transparent methodologies.

The resulting intelligence helps investors:

Improve research efficiency

Find sustainability, resilience and best practices in infrastructure investments
Compare issuers, sectors, and investments
Analyze portfolios and separately managed accounts
Develop customized investment products and screening methodologies
Support reporting, compliance, and client communications

Kestrel provides a comprehensive assessment of sustainability and resilience associated with individual municipal bonds. With qualitative and quantitative data fields, Kestrel Sustainability Intelligence includes:

• Four numeric scores, each on a scale of 1-5, where high scores reflect exemplary bonds with positive impacts and presence of risk mitigants:
• Environmental (E)
• Social (S)
• Transparency (G)
• Composite Score
• Sustainability Themes, which identify the key drivers of each numeric score
• Summary of Analysis including key bond-financed activities and their sustainability and resilience attributes
• Alignment with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and 169 Targets
• Resilience insights
• Sources of repayment are identified and classified as either “generally acceptable” or “possible flashpoint”
• Eligible green, social or sustainability bonds are identified, including unlabeled bonds
• Climate risk disclosure score, which assesses the adequacy of climate risk information provided in offering documents
• Green building and sustainability certifications for financed activities

Used by asset managers, consultants, and other market participants, Sustainability Intelligence supports security selection, portfolio analysis, benchmarking, product development, reporting, and sustainable investment workflows.

Sustainability Analysis and Scores is a versatile offering. Possible uses include:

• Integration in Bond Trading – Identify bonds that meet sustainability, resilience or impact criteria to support efficient buy/sell decisions in primary and secondary markets.
• Construct and Manage Portfolios – Use Kestrel Sustainability Intelligence to construct fixed-income portfolios that tilt toward sustainability, resilience or impact.
• Thematic Investing – Identify bonds that qualify for specific themes, like Clean Energy, Access to Education, Affordable Housing, Nature-Based Solutions or Resilient Infrastructure.

• Identify unlabeled Green, Social and Sustainability bonds – Identify unlabeled but eligible bonds in the primary and secondary markets. Kestrel performs a controversy check on unlabeled, but eligible bonds.
• Compliance – Meet your sustainable investing commitments. Show compliance with internal and external investment mandates.
• Impact Reporting – Communicate the impacts of bond holdings in multiple ways. We include a narrative description of bond-financed activities and associated impact.

Sustainability Intelligence is available through

Kestrel’s Platform

API Data Services

Customized Intelligence Solutions

Please contact us to learn more or schedule a demo.

Kestrel Sustainability Scores (only) are available on Bloomberg and Investortools.

Kestrel Sustainability Intelligence includes separate environmental, social and transparency scores as well as a Composite Score for each bond. Each score is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being a low score and 5 being a high score.

• A bond’s environmental score (E score) reflects the presence or absence of material factors that advance three Sustainable Finance Principles: 1) transition to a decarbonized economy; 2) integrate resilient and sustainable design features; and 3) preserve, enhance, or restore natural capital. Industry-accepted best practices that advance these Principles are identified within each sub-sector. Bonds with high environmental scores finance activities that directly or indirectly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, incorporate sustainable and resilient design features, and/or incorporate nature-based solutions as appropriate for that sub-sector.
• A bond’s social score (S score) reflects the presence or absence of material factors that indicate alignment with the Principle of promoting a more equitable society and a just transition. Sector-specific best practices that foster improved access to essential services, affordable housing, food security, and/or socioeconomic empowerment are assessed by Kestrel analysts.  Analysts also consider the population served by the financed activities.
• A bond’s transparency score (G score) reflects the transparency and disclosure around bond-financed activities. The degree to which the issuer has made information about bond-financed activities readily available is assessed. Best practices that are considered include: clearly defined project sector(s), project location(s), purpose, rationale, and project budget.

The Composite Score is a weighted average of the E, S and G scores for each bond. This weighted score puts the sustainability characteristics in a broader market context, allowing for comparison within and across sectors. For example, it is possible to compare school bonds to hospital bonds.

Weighting is assigned based on where the sector has the greatest opportunity for impact, and is founded in academic research and industry knowledge. For example, since the transportation sector contributes more than 25% of all US greenhouse gas emissions, and a sustainable future requires decarbonization of our transportation system, Kestrel weighs the environmental score for transportation bonds more heavily than the social score. Similarly, the primary benefit of a K-12 school is the opportunity for education, so the S score is weighted more heavily.

Weighting does not inherently prioritize certain sectors.

The UN SDGs include 17 Goals for sustainable development, and each Goal has underlying sub-goals or “Targets” (totaling 169) that describe more detailed actions necessary to achieve a particular Goal. For example, UN SDG Goal 4 “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” has ten Targets.

We use UN SDG Targets to provide additional insights and transparency about the sustainable benefits of the uses of proceeds, and we apply a consistent approach to assigning these based on the financed activities.

We identify the source of funds for payment of principal and interest on each bond. These sources are also characterized as “Generally Acceptable” or “Possible Flashpoints.” If a source of repayment is potentially controversial, we provide this information for investors. This has no impact on scoring, and it is left to individual investors to decide if they want to act on this information.

A few examples of “possible flashpoints” in sources of repayment include revenues from: mining, tobacco, casinos, petroleum refining and oil and gas royalties.