Scoring Methodology

Case Intensity Score

The intensity score is a comprehensive measure, ranging from 1 to 5 (from low to high severity), used to assess the impact of a specific Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) event on a particular company. The case intensity is derived from the underlying case documents and corresponds to the highest intensity identified among those documents.

How It Works

Fine-tuned score:

We fine-tune a Large Language Model (LLM) to replicate the assessments of ESG analysts in evaluating the risks that events pose to companies. To achieve this, our internal ESG team applies our intensity score methodology to annotate thousands of events, allowing us to have a large training dataset (training and testing).

This methodology is based on three pillars:

• Impact on the company: The reputational risk for the company as well as the financial and operational impact.
• Impact on stakeholders: The volume of stakeholders impacted and the degree of the impact.
• Level of responsibility: The legal risks and the level of the company’s involvement (accidental, negligence, or intentional).

Each pillar is assigned a score from 1 to 5 by our team of ESG experts, which then contributes to the final intensity score.

Volume impact:

SESAMm applies a bonus or penalty to the LLM score based on how many articles mention the event compared to the company’s usual coverage. Specifically, we calculate the ESG Relative Volume by counting the number of ESG articles mentioning the company over the last 90 days.

If the ESG event gets a high coverage in the media compared to the company's 90-day average, we apply a bonus (+1 or +2) to the Intensity Score.

If the ESG event gets a low coverage in the media compared to the company's 90-day average, we apply a penalty (-1 or -2) to the Intensity Score.

This helps ensure our final score reflects the event’s severity and the level of media attention it receives.

Case Intensity:

Case-level intensity is derived as the maximum intensity score observed across all Events within the Case.

Controversy Exposure Score

The Controversy Exposure Score (CES) is a continuous score ranging from 0 to 100. It incorporates SESAMm’s proprietary Intensity, Volume, and Novelty scores to provide an ongoing, real-time measure of a company’s exposure to ESG risks, allowing our clients to understand and monitor risk over time.

Events are the primary input to SESAMm’s Controversy Exposure Score (CES), as the score is computed from Event-level signals such as intensity and volume, then aggregated at the entity level. Cases also directly influence CES through the novelty component, which is based on case age. The CES therefore combines Event-level scoring with Case-level temporality. More information on the CES is available here.

UNGC Violation Screening

SESAMm automatically screens ESG Events against the 10 United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) Principles, flagging those that represent potential breaches. Each event is classified into one of three risk levels (Violator, Watchlist, or Low Risk) based on the severity of the potential breach and the degree of company responsibility. The classification also identifies the specific UNGC principles implicated.

UNGC classification is calculated at the Event level only. More information on the UNGC Violation Screening is available here.