S&P Global Hosts ESG-focused Hackathon with Claremont Colleges Consortium

Students Leveraged S&P Global’s Collaboration with Snowflake to Access Key Datasets Available From the S&P Global Marketplace

S&P Global has concluded the first-ever Claremont FinTech Hackathon, a national competition open to students at the California-based Claremont Colleges Consortium. The winning team will have the opportunity to develop their project with a team from S&P Global.

During the month-long hackathon, students used S&P Global datasets and modeling to assess how U.S. companies are accelerating progress in the world through environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts. The winning team, CGU FinTech, worked to identify a correlation between human capital development and talent attraction and retention, as proxies for identifying companies’ exposure to racial and social injustice. The team’s findings indicate that these factors, on average, contribute most to the social dimension of a company’s S&P Global ESG Score, and therefore may be representative of how well companies are dealing with emerging social challenges.

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“The Claremont FinTech Hackathon brought together the innovative and energetic approaches of students with access to world-class ESG and financial data,” said Manjit Jus, Global Head of ESG Research for S&P Global Sustainable1. “Through this initiative, S&P Global created an environment where students can experience how we serve the markets by providing them with essential intelligence on sustainability. Importantly, we are engaging a generation who plays a key role in addressing tomorrow’s challenges and brings a unique perspective to the problems we are trying to address.”

During the hackathon, more than 40 students making up 13 teams came together to examine how well U.S. companies are supporting ESG initiatives. Teams developed models to showcase their findings by leveraging seven unique datasets, accessible via S&P Global’s collaboration with Snowflake’s Cloud Data Platform. Datasets included S&P Global ESG Scores, Machine Readable Transcripts and S&P Capital IQ Fundamentals, among others available via the S&P Global Marketplace.

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This inaugural ESG hackathon was facilitated through S&P Global’s EssentialTECH program. Since 2018, EssentialTECH has provided opportunities for S&P Global employees to expand their technology fluency and skills, prepare them for future growth and opportunity and position the organization for success in the future of work.

“The Claremont FinTech Hackathon offered an exciting opportunity for students, particularly given the recent momentum for social issues to be at the forefront of how we think about ESG,” said Nishant Dass, Charles M. Stone Associate Professor of Finance & Director of the Financial Economics Institute (FEI), Claremont McKenna College. “The opportunity reflects our culture across the Claremont Colleges Consortium, in which we believe that corporations and society at large need to take these ESG-related issues seriously. Participants were able to put their skills into practice and work as a team to hack their way to a more equitable and sustainable future.”

Upon conclusion of the hackathon, participants received a digital certificate signed by Douglas L. Peterson, President and Chief Executive Officer of S&P Global and alumnus of Claremont McKenna College, class of 1980. Second place winners and the submission deemed most creative will receive a mentorship session with an S&P Global executive.

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