In 2019 Neural Alpha was commissioned to build a bespoke data platform for The Baltic Exchange which would become the base of all activities related to the publication of the Baltic Exchange’s financial benchmarks and derivatives. Additionally Neural Alpha developed a quality control system within BDP that is able to tackle the challenge of benchmark validation in a market with the unique challenges of ocean freight: unpredictable liquidity, extremely high volatility, and highly siloed market activity, with often restricted information. BDP deploys a battery of univariate and multivariate tests to be able to assess the contributors to The Baltic Exchange’s indices for quality, relevance, and conformity to expected standards.

Materiality was again in the spotlight recently with launch of IFRS sustainability disclosure standards S1 & S2. Whilst the standards were generally welcomed as a significant step in creating a global baseline for corporate sustainability disclosures grounded in the best practices of accounting standards it was seen as controversial in some quarters. In a large part this was due to its approach to dealing with materiality and more specifically ‘double materiality’ — something largely avoided in the standards according to critics. Proponents highlight the mantra that “what can be measured can be managed” when suggesting that focusing on single materiality / materiality should be the priority for disclosing organisations and is thus the focus of these standards. Double materiality encompasses not just sustainability risks which impact a company’s financial performance but the degree to which that company’s products and activities impact the wider world — a philosophy more adopted in European standards such as in the work of EFRAG.

Trase Finance – a collaboration between fintech company Neural Alpha, international non-profit research and policy organisation the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and NGO Global Canopy – seeks to identify second-order environmental impacts in supply chains, enabling transparency and shedding light on the hidden risks and opportunities that can materially influence financial and non-financial performance.