Partners Group provides access to private markets for around 900 institutional investors and currently has about $94 billion in assets under management (AuM).

This award recognises the significant enhancements made to the firm's proprietary 'ESG Dashboards' last year and the manner in which the results were disseminated.

The Dashboards help Partners track and report key performance indicators (KPIs) for environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics that are material to most businesses such as energy management, health & safety, cybersecurity and gender equality. The only investments not covered are those in its $22 billion private debt portfolio.

Two new KPIs were added last year, covering climate change and 'board maturity', and an ESG Dashboard was introduced for real estate assets, which represent about $15 billion of its AuM.

The climate change KPI aims to show each asset's estimated carbon footprint and helps Partners identify where the greatest climate-related risks and opportunities lie. The 'board maturity' KPI stems from an assessment process developed by a dedicated team within the company focussing on corporate governance – a major concern for private equity investors.

The Dashboards were published in Partners' Corporate Sustainability Report for the second time in 2019 and the key metrics and initiatives outlined in the report were then presented live to an audience of shareholders, analysts, media and ratings agencies.

Board members of investee companies also get to see the Dashboards. "They get quite competitive," Carmela Mondino, senior associate – ESG and sustainability, told Environmental Finance. "We've had several requests for advice on how to improve".

Partners has also introduced a more rigorous methodology to identify the most material ESG metrics for each of its portfolio companies. This methodology is inspired by the materiality framework developed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. It results in the various ESG topics being rated as having high, medium or low materiality for a specific company. EF