Bloomberg has launched its Global Aggregate Green, Social, Sustainability (GSS) Bond Indices, which use the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index, the Bloomberg Sustainable Finance Group’s GSS bond indicators, and fields that show alignment with the International Capital Market Association Green Bond, Social Bond and Sustainability Bond Principles and Guidelines.

By launching the indices, 24 in all, with datasets from the company’s ESG data team, the company’s terminal clients, it notes, will also benefit from transparency into underlying bond documentation, such as use of proceeds allocation to the eligible project categories and subcategories, as well as alignment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, offering integration across portfolio management workflows, including for performance and attribution.

A newly released sustainable index eligibility indicator field enables terminal clients to analyze those securities that are currently included in the index, as well as those facing potential exclusion.

The universe of eligible instruments – ranging across corporates, sovereign, supranational and agency bonds, municipals and structured products – are individually researched and maintained by a dedicated fixed-income and ESG data team to ensure securities are reviewed and appropriately tagged in an expeditious manner.

All securities, the company states, are further reviewed to ensure ongoing reporting is confirmed through the filing of impact and allocation reports by the issuer. This process results in a robust universe of eligible sustainable securities for inclusion in the index.

The indices are now available for benchmarking, asset allocation and product creation purposes. They can be further customized to meet specific individual investor needs using additional fields, such as specific exclusions, regulatory aware fields and even sector-specific weightings.

“We endeavour to capture both short- and long-term market trends with our sustainable index offerings, and sustainable debt is swiftly growing, with global sustainable debt issuance surpassing US$1 trillion year to date,” says Jonathan Gardiner, the company’s sustainable indices product manager. “[Our new indices] incorporate the research of our ESG and fixed-income data teams to deliver a diverse set of indices to meet the varied needs of the investment community exploring this growing market.”