Just because a company says its business practices are ethical, doesn’t necessarily mean they actually are. Recent studies suggest that companies are able to influence their ESG score by greenwashing corporate sustainability information. In this report, we argue that alternative data can be used to test ethical claims as well as build a more accurate and objective ESG risk signal.

September 14th was an important milestone in the march towards Open Banking. It marked the original deadline for implementation of PSD2 or ‘the second Payment Services Directive.’ If you don’t know what that is, and you are currently purchasing (or thinking of purchasing) European consumer transactional data – you may want to read on. In this report, we introduce the ubiquitous, yet often poorly understood, FinTech phenomenon of Open Banking, and consider the implications of these regulations on both buyers and sellers of alternative data.

In the following Intelligence piece, we explore healthcare claims and electronic health records (EHRs) as alternative data sources for investors. Healthcare claims and EHRs can offer valuable insights into drug/medical device prescribing and utilisation trends. This information has clear applications for investors in pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device/equipment companies as well as companies responsible for paying healthcare claims such as managed care organisations or other health insurers.

Accounting scandals can lead to crippling losses for the uninformed investor - from the Enron and Worldcom scandals to the more recent fraudulent activity of Kangde Xin and Kangmei in China. This article considers the ever-increasing influence of Chinese capital markets, company-level risk factors for financial misreporting, as well as how investors can use alternative data sources to detect early signs of malfeasance by China-listed companies.

Last week, it was announced that leading telehealth provider, Teladoc (NYSE: TDOC), observed a 33% increase in share price and a 40% increase in revenue, year to date. At Neudata, we thought it would be as good a time as any to discuss some alternative datasets that could help investors predict some key metrics of telehealth companies.

Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you shouldn’t believe everything you read? In the following intelligence piece, we consider the 21st-century crisis of fabricated content and its implications for users of alternative data. Leave your MAUs at the door and join us in the strange world of app download fraud, review fabrication, and bot-generated content.

It is no secret that the current alternative data market heavily services public equity investors. Of course, these are some of the biggest alt data spenders, so such preferential treatment isn’t surprising. However, this bias leads us to believe that non-equity investors may assume that alt data isn’t relevant to their strategies. Unsurprisingly, we believe otherwise. In this report we take a look at the alternative data options for real estate investors. Specifically, we address 1) issues with using traditional datasets and 2) which alternative datasets could help provide more accurate KPIs.

The role of retail investors in the financial markets cannot be understated or underappreciated. In the following Intelligence report, we demonstrate how retail investor activity, sentiment, and attention can be a proxy for institutional investors to gauge future asset prices, stock liquidity, market returns, and market efficiency. The report will also go on to discuss several alternative datasets on retail investors that may be used by readers in creating such a leading indicator.

Don’t hate the ESG rater, hate the very subjective ESG game. With the upcoming regulatory changes for investors to integrate ESG, we outline the specific issues investors should pay attention to. We also summarize the current state of ESG data, trends impacting the industry and the meaning of ESG.

A narrative dominates the media and news that we in the midst of a turbulent and unpredictable epoch. In other words, we are living through ‘uncertain times.’ Many people, academics, alt data providers, and investors alike, are asking themselves whether such text-based narratives can be distilled into a quantitative signal. In this intelligence piece, we demonstrate how economic indicators derived from unstructured news data have been variously used to assess Chinese labour market conditions and forecast Japanese inflation.