Morningstar Sustainalytics, an ESG research, ratings and data firm, today announced acquiring property-level climate risk data service provider Aquantix, according to a press release.
The acquisition is intended to meet rising demand for climate-related data among real estate investors, banks and lenders, and enable Morningstar to help more financial market stakeholders to assess climate risks in the global real estate space.
“Real estate is an asset class directly impacted by increasing physical climate risks,” stated Azadeh Sabour, Senior Vice President of Climate Solutions at Morningstar Sustainalytics. “With the addition of the Aquantix team and their technology, we are fast-tracking our asset-level data collection and developing innovative climate-focused solutions for the commercial and residential real estate market.”
Through its AI-powered models, Aquantix quantifies the impacts of climate change on half a billion residential and commercial property assets in 180 countries. Morningstar Sustainalytics says that by adding the data service providers technology to its current team of 90, it expects to rapidly expand its climate capabilities and solutions.
The company also says it will benefit from Aquantix’s ongoing strategic partnership with Teranet, a registry solution provider for real estate ecosystem platforms, data and analytics. Through that partnership, Teranet utilizes Aquantix property-level climate risk data to provide federally regulated financial institutions and regulators with data solutions.
Morningstar says that by continuing to collaborate with Teranet, it will further deliver high-quality real estate climate data solutions “to decision-makers in real estate, banking, lending, and insurance.”
“Banks, lenders and real estate asset managers require a comprehensive understanding of the impact that climate change has on their portfolio of real estate investments,” stated Toby Messier, previous co-CEO of Aquantix, who joins Morningstar Sustainalytics as Commercialization Director of Real Estate Solutions.
“Aquantix fills this void by capturing millions of climate-related data points and providing meaningful property risk metrics that measure the estimated asset damage from emerging climate events across various time frames and scenarios. By joining Morningstar Sustainalytics, we are in an even stronger position to scale and help more real estate financiers reach their broader climate change goals,” Messier said.
In other recent proptech news, Knox Financial announced expanding its loan products alongside a $50 million fundraise. Fello also secured a $25 million mix of debt and equity for its agent-led iBuyer solution.