In September 2018, Sustainalytics announced the launch of our next generation ESG research and ratings, Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings. To provide our clients with a better understanding of the ESG Risk Ratings, we published a series of white papers, the first of which presents a brief history of responsible investment and covers the motivations for developing a next generation ESG rating. We unpack the framework behind the ESG Risk Ratings and discuss the ratings’ key concepts. The paper also summarizes the results from our empirical testing, where we ran 96 absolute, momentum and best-in-class strategies on eight ESG issues across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.