Colorado Springs, Colorado and Hood River, Oregon, September 4, 2024 – Investortools, a leading provider of fixed-income software solutions, and Kestrel, the US market leader in verifying the impact of municipal bonds, today announced a new partnership to add Kestrel’s Sustainability Scores for municipal bonds to Investortools’ products. This partnership expands access to Kestrel benchmarks on transition alignment, sustainability, and resilience for municipal bonds at the series level.
“Kestrel Sustainability Scores will provide our clients with additional tools to evaluate the sustainability and risk profiles of municipal bonds in their portfolios or under consideration for investment,” explained Tim Hadley, Senior Vice President at Investortools. “Kestrel’s insights are valuable across all types of municipal bonds, not solely those with an explicit ESG focus. By integrating these scores into our software, clients can seamlessly incorporate them into their workflow, enhancing the efficiency of their decision-making processes.”
Investortools will provide Kestrel Sustainability Scores to customers at no additional cost within the Perform, Smart, CreditScope, and Custom Index Manager products. Subscribers to Kestrel also have access to deep analytics on sustainability, resilience, and uses of proceeds that drive the scores, as well as Kestrel’s identification of unlabeled but eligible green and social bonds. Kestrel covers Municipal Primary Market deals rated investment grade A or better and $20 million par or greater. Coverage of the secondary market is currently over $2.0 trillion par and is continuously expanding.
The collaboration builds on Investortools’ current ability for clients to score bonds based on environmental, social, and governance data attributes. These scores are then used to make informed decisions regarding portfolio construction, compliance, and maintenance.
“Investortools delivers critical workflow tools to the buy-side and sell-side in the municipal market. Many of our customers shared their desire to access Kestrel analytics through Investortools. We are excited to work closely with the team at Investortools to improve access to fundamental information about transition alignment, sustainability, and resilience in municipal finance,” said Monica Reid, CEO of Kestrel. “We aim to empower investors with these benchmarks to help them accurately price risk.”
About Investortools
Having continually innovated to serve the needs of the fixed-income marketplace for nearly four decades, Investortools systems have become a prerequisite for fixed-income investment management success. Investortools’ comprehensive suite of products is available as a SaaS solution, addressing all aspects of the investment lifecycle from portfolio, order, and execution management to performance analytics and attribution, 2a-7 compliance, and credit analysis. Investortools is a trusted partner for more than 200 retail and institutional SMA managers, fund managers, broker-dealers, and fixed-income market participants who manage over $1 trillion in assets within the platform. To explore Investortools’ commitment to innovation, visit www.investortools.com.
About Kestrel
Kestrel provides Sustainability Intelligence™ for municipal markets, helping to set the market standard for sustainable finance. Kestrel is also a leading provider of external reviews for green, social, and sustainability bond transactions and a Climate Bonds Initiative Approved Verifier. The company evaluates corporate and municipal bonds in all sectors worldwide for conformance with international green and social bond standards. Kestrel offers comprehensive Sustainability Analysis and Scores covering the entire muni market at the series level, and other types of fixed-income investments. Kestrel also offers custom solutions including evaluation of transition plans.