Morningstar Sustainalytics Enhances Physical Climate Risk Capabilities with XDI and Veridion
Dataset is designed to translate asset-level climate hazards into risk metrics for investors
Morningstar Sustainalytics, a leading provider of sustainable investing research, ratings, and data, today announced it is collaborating with XDI (Cross Dependency Initiative), physical climate risk specialists, and Veridion, an AI-powered business data platform to further develop its physical climate risk product for asset managers and asset owners.
This development intends to address a key gap in existing climate risk tools by seeking to translate physical hazard exposure into financially relevant insights. While the industry has made progress in identifying which assets face exposure to floods, wildfires, heat stress and other climate hazards, converting that exposure into metrics that support real investment decisions remains an evolving challenge.
A group of asset managers and asset owners will act as partners, providing ongoing input on use cases, data needs, and integration into existing investment workflows. This will build on Morningstar Sustainalytics’ broader climate offering, including its Low Carbon Transition Ratings and existing Physical Climate Risk Metrics.
David Pagliaro, president, Morningstar Sustainalytics, commented: "Working with XDI and Veridion reflects an important evolution in how physical climate risk is assessed and applied in investments. Physical asset-level hazard data has become more available, but investors have lacked a consistent framework to determine financial relevance at the portfolio level. By connecting exposure, asset materiality and financial impact through business interruption, this approach aims to help institutional investors identify where physical risks are most likely to affect long-term value and inform the integration of those insights into portfolio construction and risk management."
This development brings together three complementary capabilities from each organization to create a more integrated view of physical climate risk.
XDI will provide asset-level hazard impact analysis through its engineering-based Climate Risk Engines, combining sub-asset data, hazard modeling and forward-looking climate scenarios to estimate how climate hazards translate into operational disruption. These are designed to be consistent with key industry frameworks such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).
Veridion will supply the geolocation and business intelligence layer needed to help map companies to their physical assets and operations globally. Veridion’s AI-enabled company intelligence platform supports the mapping of corporate entities to their physical assets and operations at global scale. Veridion's business and asset intelligence will connect directly to XDI's physical asset models.
Morningstar Sustainalytics will integrate each component of the product through its proprietary investment research framework. Central to this is a new Asset Materiality Assessment. This is a structured methodology for determining which physical assets are likely to be material to a company's core business activities. Not all assets exposed to climate hazards are equally consequential for investors. The Asset Materiality Assessment will seek to make that distinction clearer, with the aim of ensuring that physical risk signals are weighted by their estimated relevance to operations, revenue generation and long-term earnings capacity.
The output is expected to combine asset-level physical risk data with company-level financial signals, giving investors a view that is intended to span granular exposure detail to portfolio-level financial implications.
Dr. Karl Mallon, founder and head of science and technology, XDI commented: "For nearly two decades, the XDI team has been pioneering physical climate risk analysis. The XDI Climate Risk Engines have always been designed to utilize detailed information on asset design, construction, and materiality. Until now, however, acquiring that level of intelligence at scale has been extremely difficult. Veridion helps make this rich business and asset data accessible. XDI translates it into sophisticated climate risk metrics. Morningstar Sustainalytics then seeks to transform those insights into a new generation of decision-ready intelligence for investors and the broader financial sector."
Florin Tufan, CEO of Veridion, commented: "Physical climate risk hinges on a deceptively simple question: which company owns what, and where? Veridion's live company graph answers it at global scale, mapping which assets belong to which companies, where they operate, and what activity is occurring at each location, so when investors act on an exposure number, they're acting on the world as it is."
About Morningstar, Inc.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment insights in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets, and alliances and redistributors. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $378 billion in AUMA as of Dec. 31, 2025. The Company operates through wholly-owned subsidiaries in 32 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on LinkedIn @Morningstar.
About Morningstar Sustainalytics
Morningstar Sustainalytics is a leading sustainable investment data, research, and ratings firm that supports investors around the world with the development and implementation of responsible investment strategies. For more than 30 years, the firm has been at the forefront of developing high-quality, innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of global investors. Today, Morningstar Sustainalytics works with hundreds of the world’s leading asset managers and pension funds who incorporate sustainability information and assessments into their investment processes. The firm also works with hundreds of companies and their financial intermediaries to help them consider material sustainability factors in policies, practices, and capital projects. Morningstar Sustainalytics has analysts around the world with varied multidisciplinary expertise across more than 40 industry groups. For more information, visit www.sustainalytics.com.
About Veridion
Veridion is a global company-intelligence data provider that maintains a living knowledge graph of the world's businesses, fusing legal identity with operating reality across roughly 600 million companies and updating continuously as the world changes. Each company profile spans firmographics, locations and operational footprint, products and services, ownership and corporate linkage, ESG, and technographics. Organizations build on Veridion to automate decisions about companies at scale across risk, underwriting, and market intelligence. Data is delivered through APIs, batch, and warehouse-native feeds, with source provenance and a confidence score on every attribute. Learn more at veridion.com.
About XDI (Cross Dependency Initiative)
XDI is a global specialist in physical climate risk and adaptation analysis. Since 2007, the XDI team has helped governments, investors, insurers, banks and corporations understand the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on physical assets, infrastructure and operations. Combining climate science, engineering and financial analysis, XDI delivers asset-level physical climate risk analysis that support resilience planning, investment decision-making and climate adaptation. XDI is part of The Climate Risk Group. In 2025, XDI was recognised as market leader in both the Forrester Wave™: Climate Risk Analytics Software and Verdantix Smart Innovators: Physical Climate Risk Solutions assessments.
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Louis Hogan louis.hogan@morningstar.com +44 73454 40330