The sustainability ratings industry generates billions of dollars annually, and it has a structural problem that is rarely discussed directly: in many business models, the companies being rated are also paying for the rating. ESG advisory services, paid data submissions, and premium access tiers all create financial relationships between raters and rated. These relationships create incentives that don't obviously align with producing accurate, unflattering assessments.
Conflicts Baked Into the Model
Several major ESG rating agencies earn significant revenue from advisory and consulting services — helping companies understand and improve their scores. When the same organization both assesses a company and advises it on how to score better, objectivity becomes structurally compromised. This isn't speculative: academic research has documented systematic divergence between sustainability ratings from independent researchers and those from agencies with material advisory relationships with the rated companies.
There's also the problem of rating shopping. When multiple competing agencies assess the same universe of companies, companies can selectively engage with — and disclose to — the agencies most likely to produce favorable scores, then prominently promote those results while ignoring less flattering assessments. The most favorable score becomes the official brand position. Investors and consumers who see the headline number have no obvious way to know that three other agencies scored the same company significantly lower.
Transparency as the Fix
The solution to conflicts of interest in ratings is methodological transparency. If the criteria, data sources, weights, and calculation methods are fully published and open to external scrutiny, it becomes much harder to game the system — and for bias to operate invisibly. Transparent methodology invites challenge. Opaque methodology invites manipulation.
Susty's methodology is designed to be fully open. Every score is traceable to its underlying data sources. The weighting system is documented and published. And Susty has no advisory business — there is no revenue reason to grade any company more favorably than the data supports. Independence isn't a nice-to-have in ratings. It's the entire point.