1.7.0 (11 / 2024)

Release notes for release 1.7.0.

Release notes 11/2024

Release number: 1.7.0 Release date: 27th November, 2024 Notes updated: 22nd November, 2024 Current state: Upcoming

The most significant improvements to the Upright model compared to the previous release 1.6.0 are listed below. Latest release 1.7.0 may receive targeted updates and fixes before it becomes stable, at the time a new latest release is published. These release notes will be updated to reflect any significant updates. More information on releases can be found on page Release cycle.

Company and fund coverage

• Fund coverage: An off-the-shelf benchmark universe of 1,000+ private equity funds will be added to the Upright platform on Tuesday 3rd of December.

Net impact

• Scarce human capital & jobs impacts: To improve comparability of company results, an adjustment that fine-tunes estimated intensities for the scarce human capital and jobs impacts based on the proportion of a company's reported employee count and revenue has been removed. The change mostly affects small companies, generally lowering impact size estimates related to these impact categories and increasing the net impact ratio of small companies.

Removal of adjustments to scarce human capital and jobs intensity

Upright produces estimates on the jobs and scarce human capital intensity of a company primarily based on the jobs and scarce human capital intensity of their products and services, which are estimated based on OECD Structural Demographic Business Statistics (SDBS), and results from the surveys from the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

The now-removed adjustment fine-tuned the results by comparing the company's reported employees-per-revenue to what we would expect a company's employees-per-revenue to be based on the company's products and the OECD SDBS, and using the difference to adjust the initial estimates. In other words, if the reported employees-per-revenue was higher than expected, the adjustment would increase the scores for both scarce human capital and jobs impacts. Conversely, it would lower the scores, if the reported employees-per-revenue was lower than expected.

While the adjustment theoretically improves accuracy of results, the now-removed adjustment resulted in certain problematic dynamics. While the problems are somewhat present in all types of companies, they are best illustrated by two especially problematic examples, consultancies and startups:

Consultancies: Consider two management consulting firms (A and B) that provide the same products and services, and have the same amount of revenue. Company A, however, has twice as many employees as company B. Is company A's scarce human intensity twice as big as company B? No, most likely company A employs more highly skilled, i.e. more scarce human resources. Most likely, the opportunity cost of the average employee of company A is twice as big as the one of company B's average employee, meaning their scarce human intensities ought to be equal, i.e. no adjustment is needed, and any adjustment would be unfair to company B.

Startups: In its impact data, Upright seeks to capture the size of a company's impact relative to a company's size. As an proxy for a company's size, we use revenue. As all proxies, it is not perfect, but works generally well for this purpose. The edge case where this proxy breaks down is startups that have no or very little revenue - there are some huge pre-revenue startups. For such companies, Upright's net impact profiles are best understood in terms of "what would the impact profile of the company be if it had revenue", or "what is the expected value of the company's impacts". The adjustment, however, would only be based on what the company's employees-per-revenue ratio is today (or when the figures were reported), which led the now-removed adjustment to overemphasise the scarce human resources intensity and jobs-intensity of startups. As a compounding problem, employee count and revenue figures are not available for many startups, leading to different treatment (and different impact profiles) of companies for which such figures are available, and the ones for which they are not.

Based on the considerations above, the adjustment has been removed in release 1.7.0.

• In fall of 2024, Upright is focused on a longer Net impact development project with the goal of radically improving results quality and transparency. The results of the development project will be released later on.

SFDR Principal Adverse Impacts (PAI)

• Improved error detection for disclosed values: Error detection systems for disclosed PAI metrics have been improved and data points have been corrected accordingly. Affected metrics include the following PAI and EU taxonomy metrics:

  • Emissions to water

  • GHG emissions (Scope 1,2 ,3)

  • Hazardous waste

  • Non-renewable energy share

  • Total energy consumption

  • Water usage

  • EU taxonomy

The disclosure corrections have also been applied to results belonging to release 1.6.0

CSRD double materiality assessment

• Fund-level export: Fund-level DMA results can be downloaded in Excel format.

• Impact reasonings: CSRD impacts feature detailed “reasonings”, i.e. more detailed explanations that clarify the connection between a product and its specific impact. These reasonings are available in the Impact Materiality module under the “Product-Level Assessment” section. To view the reasonings, select “Show Reasonings”, which will display an additional column with the reasoning text in the table below.

• Improved risk and opportunity descriptions: The Financial Materiality module for CSRD has been updated with clearer and more informative descriptions of risks and opportunities. These updates also specify the risk type, such as transition or physical risk, where applicable.

• New module to measure financial statement effects of risks and opportunities: The new module enables users of the Upright Platform to translate their DMA results into monetary effects across each line item in their company’s income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement over the short-, medium- and long-term time horizons. This enables sustainability professionals to cover phased-in CSRD requirements, CFOs to understand the effects of sustainability risks and opportunities on their bottom line, and institutional investors to manage their portfolio-level risks. All DMA customers of Upright will have a chance to upgrade their subscription to include this module when their results are updated in 2025.

Please note that impact reasonings and improved risk/opportunity descriptions are included in all upcoming CSRD assessments. They are not automatically applied to previously delivered DMA results. For existing customers, these developments will be made available latest during the data updates of H1/2025.