The user passes a company identifier as input and receives a single ESG score payload as output.
That payload contains an overall ESG score on a 0 to 100 scale, the average for the company's industry and where the company sits against it, a score for each of the three pillars, and a score for each of the 26 risk criteria. Every score is accompanied by a written justification.
The module supports supplier and counterparty qualification, comparing companies consistently across a portfolio, screening during deal evaluation, and supporting internal assessments with a defensible figure.
A standalone moduleESG Scores is its own module, licensed and usable on its own. Nothing described on this page depends on any other part of the ESG API.
When company information is limited
Where little has been published about a company's ESG activity, its industry and its own profile still support a score, so the absence is not treated as poor performance, and the justification discloses it.
An ESG score is not assigned only where there is insufficient company-specific information to determine a reliable score.
Read the justification before applying a thresholdTwo companies can hold the same score for different reasons: one assessed on a great deal of published material, the other on very little. The justification is where that difference is disclosed.
This matters if you are screening a large set of companies on a numeric cutoff, because a threshold treats those two situations identically when they probably warrant different handling.
The 0 to 100 scale
| Score | Band | What it represents |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 44 | Poor | Severe ESG shortcomings or material controversies, or inherent industry risks that outweigh the company's demonstrated ESG efforts. |
| 45 to 59 | Neutral | Mixed ESG evidence, where shortcomings and positives roughly balance out. |
| 60 to 74 | Good | Clearly positive ESG practices in several pillars, with limited shortcomings. |
| 75 to 100 | Excellent | Exemplary performance across all ESG pillars. |
The same scale applies to the overall score, the three pillar scores, and each risk criterion score.
What the response contains
| Level | What is returned |
|---|---|
| Overall | One score, a summary description of the company's ESG performance, and a justification for the score. |
| Industry | The average for the company's industry and the quartile the company falls into, each with a justification. |
| Pillar | One score and justification for each of Environmental, Social, and Governance. |
| Risk criteria | One score and justification for each of the 26 criteria, nested under the pillar it belongs to. |
The overall and industry levels are always returned. The pillar and risk criteria levels may not always be present, depending on available ESG information.
Risk criteria
All 26 criteria are nested under their pillar, each with a score and a justification. They accompany the pillar scores. See ESG risk taxonomy for the full list.
A criterion's score is null where it could not be scored for the company. Unlawful fishing for a professional training provider, or testing on animals for a freight logistics operator.
The justification is never null. Where a score is null, the justification explains why. Some read as an explicit finding of non-applicability, and others as an assessment that found nothing connecting the company to that risk, so the reason is given in prose rather than as a coded value. Retrieve ESG scores shows worked examples.
A null score is not a zeroA
nullcriterion means the risk is not applicable or not assessable, not that the company performs badly on it. Treatingnullas0in an aggregate will penalise companies for risks they cannot be exposed to.
Industry benchmark and quartile
Each score is accompanied by the average for the company's industry.
The quartile indicates where the company falls relative to its industry. It is not a simple comparison against the average: it accounts for how scores are distributed within that sector.
| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
Top (25%) | In the top 25% of its industry. |
Second (25-50%) | Between the 25th and 50th percentile. |
Third (50-75%) | Between the 50th and 75th percentile. |
Bottom (25%) | In the bottom 25% of its industry. |
Read the score together with the quartileESG scores cluster differently by sector.
In a heavy industry where scores group low, such as Extractives, a company at 57 can be a strong relative performer, while the same 57 in a sector that scores highly, such as Renewables, is not.
A single numeric threshold applied across mixed sectors gives you an absolute comparison, while the quartile helps identify best-in-class performance within an industry.
Observed activity over stated intent
Scoring weighs what a company has done above what it has announced. A published pledge on its own carries limited weight, evidence that it has been acted on carries more, and reporting of controversies weighs against a score according to the severity of what is described.
Volume is not itself a signal. Repeating the same pledge across a website does not raise a score, and a company that attracts more coverage is not thereby scored better or worse than a quieter peer.
Social and Governance tend to move together
The two are inherently correlated, because strong corporate governance is usually built on sound social practices. Large divergences between the two are uncommon, though they do occur where there has been a recent and severe failure on one side.
Keeping scores current
Where a company has been scored recently enough, the existing score is returned. Otherwise processing is triggered, and the score is recomputed. That decision sits with Veridion rather than with the caller.
Recomputation is complete rather than partial: the overall score and every level returned beneath it are produced together. A score therefore always represents a single consistent assessment, and you will never receive a new overall score alongside stale pillar or criterion scores. Read more about processing patterns.