J.P Morgan launches ESG emerging market bond index

J.P Morgan on Wednesday launched a new emerging market bond index that takes environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into account, the bank said in a statement. The index, conceived in cooperation with BlackRock, will cater to investors who want to a sharper focus on responsible investing, JPMorgan said. "Sustainable investing is about investing in progress and pioneering better ways of doing business," said Sergio Trigo Paz, head of BlackRock Emerging Market Debt.
"Strong ESG practices positively impact creditworthiness in the long term, and until now ESG in emerging market debt has been more bespoke and project-based, as opposed to providing solutions at scale." The JPMorgan ESG indexes (JSEG) will be available for the EMBI Global Diversified, GBI-EM Global Diversified and CEMBI Broad Diversified indexes. The JESG index will score more than 170 countries and more than 650 issuers on data provided by research providers Sustainalytics and RepRisk as well as the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI).