ESG ratings service providers. A number of entities provide quantitative and qualitative evaluations of a company, country, financial product or fund based on a comparative assessment of their approach, disclosure, strategy or performance on ESG issues. The purpose of ESG ratings agencies is to provide analysis and ESG ratings of different issuers. Rating providers establish a methodology to inform the rating by identifying a set of relevant ESG issues, assigning indicators to evaluate performance on those issues, and then developing a weighting or scoring process to evaluate a company or issuer. For example, sustainalytics ESG risk ratings measures the degree to which a company's economic value is at risk from ESG factors, specifically the magnitude of a company's unmanaged ESG risks. The rating sorts companies into five risk categories. The risk categories are absolute, meaning that each point of risk is equivalent no matter which company or issue it applies to. MSCI research takes into consideration both ESG risks and opportunities and it uses a quantitative model to put companies into one of seven categories. The assessments are not absolute, but are intended to be relative to the standards and performance of a company's industry peers. Each provider has different methodologies and differing benefits and limitations, with little consensus between their databases and approaches. Because their techniques and assessments are different, the ratings are not easily comparable.