A Boston-based startup by the name of risQ Inc has recently enacted a partnership with none other than the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). The announcement of the partnership was made public today by way of a statement from ICE. The goal of this partnership is to aid the municipal bond ecosystem by way of assisting it in incorporating climate risk into investment and project decisions.

New Analytics To Shed Light On Municipal Bonds

The risQ firm is known for having developed an analytics platform that comprehensively serves its needs. The platform combines geospatial machine learning, climate science, and catastrophe modeling in order to provide the best possible results. This platform is capable of analysis of the climate risks involved for all issuers and obligors of municipal bonds. This allows for financially quantitative results to be delivered across all of the critical climate risks.

This analytics tool operates across all the various obligors, boundaries, and maturities. It’s analytics stay agile when operating in the most complicated hospital and transport systems, the smallest development districts, and utilities, to even the largest school districts and counties.

Set To Operate Exclusively For ICE

The collaboration between the two groups mandates that risQ will only provide its actionable climate date to the ICE Data Services, exclusively. From there, ICE will be capable of connecting to information at the level of a municipal security. This allows for accurate comparisons of entire portfolios down to one specific form of securities. ICE Data Services will offer this tool as an integrated service within its already impressive reference and municipal pricing data. With it, a new tool will be available to accurately predict the amount of climate risk that’s associated with various municipal bonds.

Mark Heckert, the ICE Data Services’ Chief Product Officer, gave a statement in regards to this. He explained that risQ had developed a data product that is breaking new ground through the application of geospatial climate data specific to a singular form of securities and municipalities. With it, the company is capable of taking advantage of ICE Data Services’ strengths within the fixed income market.

Improve ICE Product Offerings

With this new ability, Hecker states that it will allow the company to offer a unique product that will help its market participants to manage climate risk in a far easier way. This new product will be incorporated into the company’s overall risk management and investment processes, according to Heckert.

The new municipal climate package will be launched at the end of this year’s first quarter, according to both risQ and ICE Data Services.