Updated on: August 21, 2024
In this interview series by Website Planet, our host Roberto Popolizio and his guests explore how emerging technologies and trends are impacting people’s lives and the planet. Join us as we discover challenges and solutions in the present and future of tech with insights from thought leaders and change-makers in tech, business and marketing.
Stefania Di Bartolomeo is the Founder and CEO of Physis Investment, a platform promoting sustainable investing and transparency in the financial industry.
As one of the first European Impact Investing fund managers and quant-humanists, she focused on integrating technology and ethical practices into finance to shift the focus of investment strategies towards projects that protect both society and the planet.
This led her to establish Physis, a platform that helps investors measure the environmental and social impact of their portfolios by utilizing a unique data system that analyzes information from over 14,000 companies globally.
Why is transparency so crucial in your industry, especially in sustainable investing?
Granular data is essential in sustainable investing for many of the same reasons that financial data is critical for generating returns. To accurately assess a company’s risk or long-term viability, informed decisions require complete transparency when looking at the impact of a company’s operations. Transparency begins with companies themselves, as 96% of the world’s largest firms now report some level of sustainability data.
However, transforming this raw data into actionable insights requires the expertise of companies like Physis, specializing in collecting, refining, and delivering this information in a clear and usable format. By addressing the challenge of data accessibility, we enable investors, corporations, journalists, academics, and sustainability enthusiasts to focus on driving impact and staying informed, rather than spending hours on research or relying on ambiguous ESG scores.
What made you so passionate about this cause? Can you share that story with us?
I grew up in a national park, surrounded by nature, which instilled in me a deep desire to protect the ecosystems we live in.
In my previous career as a fund manager, the idea for Physis came to me while working with a client who was inquiring about an investment strategy. The client asked a simple yet powerful question:
How do you prove you are positively impacting the planet with my money?
Do you have data to show me?
At this moment, I realized I could provide plenty of analysis, company assessments, policies, and documents to help inform on the investment decisions. Still, at the end of the day, the technical material would not help the client if it was not displayed in a way they could easily understand.
Today, Physis is an award-winning fintech offering raw data on emissions, waste recycled, women employed, and more through two tools: The Physis Platform and ImpactChat.AI.
What makes your transparency measures better than traditional ESG scores?
Traditional ESG scores are not sufficient anymore, as the growing demand for detailed information across industries and regulatory bodies has exposed the limitations of a single, often opaque score.
Physis offers raw sustainability data with up to 330 indicators for over 14,000 companies, covering metrics such as emissions, gender equality, and renewable energy use. All transparent data that provides a deeper understanding of a company’s actual impact, allowing for meaningful comparisons with peers, industries, or chosen benchmarks.
With Physis, you gain actionable insights that help you generate alpha, outpace competitors, write insightful articles, and more.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced so far in maintaining and enhancing transparency?
Many believe that data collection is the biggest challenge we faced in building our platform, but while it was difficult, the real challenge was purifying the data.
Our technology uses AI to collect the data and then goes through a rigorous algorithmic quality check. However, the quality assessment is much more complex than it appears, as it confronts occasional conflicting data points and anomalies. Over the years, through a combination of advanced technology and expert analysts, we’ve streamlined this ongoing process for the Physis Platform. As we now expand into our new generative AI tool, ImpactChat.AI, we’re prepared to face new and unique challenges.
In your opinion, what technological innovations and new trends will reshape transparency in the future?
It’s already clear how generative AI is transforming data transparency across multiple industries. With this advanced technology now widely accessible, its rapid adoption in daily activities for both individuals and corporations provides thorough and unbiased insights into complex topics in second.
We are committed to leveraging this technology to offer unmatched access and transparency. With that said, we’re excited to make our extensive dataset available through our newest tool, ImpactChat.AI. This generative AI-powered chatbot, trained on our 176 million data points, serves a diverse range of users—from investors and CSR professionals to journalists and academics—allowing them to access top-quality data with unprecedented efficiency.
Here’s a look at how it’s being utilized:
- Generate thought-provoking insights: Compare the sustainability production of companies across industries or trends in other sectors.
- Save time on analytics: Easily discover new analytics to support a thesis or come up with a new idea! With ImpactChat.AI you can skip hours of manual research by asking for whatever data you’re looking for.
- Get the edge on your competitors: Compare your sustainable performance to competitors’, leveraging your strengths and weaknesses to benefit your business.
- Increase productivity: Securely integrate your data to eliminate manual file searches and retrieve complex insights in seconds.
Want to take ImpactChat.AI for a spin?
With the rollout of our new tool, ImpactChat.AI, it would be most helpful to have new users test the chatbot to enhance its performance, as it improves with each interaction.
We would greatly appreciate it if you can sign up (just paste the URL below in your browser), try out ImpactChat.AI, and share your feedback. You can easily do this either by using the feedback button located on the right side of the chatbot interface or by emailing us directly at cory.jaeger@physisinvestment.com.
Your input is invaluable to us!
https://platform.physisinvestment.com/signup
How can our readers follow you?
Want to take ImpactChat.AI for a spin?
With the rollout of our new tool, ImpactChat.AI, it would be most helpful to have new users test the chatbot to enhance its performance, as it improves with each interaction.
We would greatly appreciate it if you can sign up (just paste the URL below in your browser), try out ImpactChat.AI, and share your feedback. You can easily do this either by using the feedback button located on the right side of the chatbot interface or by emailing us directly at cory.jaeger@physisinvestment.com.
Your input is invaluable to us!
https://platform.physisinvestment.com/signup
Website: https://physisinvestment.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/physisinvestment/
X: https://x.com/physisinvest