ERM Taps Auquan to Adopt Agentic AI to Assess ESG and Reputational Risks

ERM, the world’s largest specialist sustainability consultancy, has announced a strategic collaboration with Auquan, a leader in agentic artificial intelligence (AI) for institutional finance, to embed autonomous AI agents into its sustainability and risk advisory workflows. The initiative is designed to help financial institutions, particularly those involved in private markets and investment due diligence, tackle complex Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and reputational risks at greater scale and speed than traditional methods allow.

By leveraging Auquan’s Sustainability Agent, ERM will complement its deep sustainability expertise with advanced AI capabilities that autonomously gather and analyse large, unstructured datasets — including news media, regulatory filings, stakeholder disclosures and litigation alerts — to detect emerging issues, controversies and other adverse signals that can impact investment decisions.

The collaboration comes at a time when regulatory scrutiny around ESG claims and disclosures is intensifying globally, forcing investors and their advisors to adopt tools that can provide comprehensive, real-time oversight on corporate ESG behaviour and reputational integrity.

Why This Partnership Matters

Meeting Growing ESG Demand

Institutional investors face rising pressure from regulators, limited partners and stakeholders to validate ESG performance and identify risks that could affect portfolio value or trigger compliance issues. ESG assessment work is highly data-intensive, involving the integration of disparate data sources, interpretation of qualitative disclosures and evaluation of often opaque sustainability claims.

Traditionally, analysts and consultants manually collate and synthesise this information — a process that can take days or weeks, particularly for private companies with limited reporting transparency. By incorporating agentic AI agents capable of autonomously executing end-to-end research workflows, ERM seeks to reduce manual effort and accelerate the delivery of actionable risk insights to clients.

What Agentic AI Does

Agentic AI differs from conventional AI tools in that it operates autonomously across tasks, including:

• Automated data gathering from global sources such as news, regulatory databases and agency reports
• Identification of reputational risk signals, including litigation or adverse media
• Prioritisation and contextual summarisation of relevant ESG issues for human review
• Continuous monitoring with real-time alerts about emerging concerns

By shifting data collection and initial analysis to AI agents, ERM’s experts can focus more on strategic interpretation, client engagement and tailored advisory work — functions where human judgement adds the most value.

Industry Context: ESG Complexity and AI Adoption

The convergence of sustainability advisory and advanced AI comes at a moment when both fields are undergoing rapid change. ESG frameworks such as SFDR, CSRD and other regional reporting mandates have expanded expectations for transparency and accountability, driving demand for robust analytical tools. AI and machine learning have already transformed certain aspects of sustainability reporting and risk analysis, but agentic AI represents a further evolution — enabling systems that can operate autonomously to perform complex, multi-step tasks with minimal human intervention.

In parallel, clients across private markets — including private equity, growth equity and infrastructure investors — are seeking faster and more comprehensive assessments of potential investments. Agentic AI can provide early warnings about sustainability misalignment, reputational controversy or governance challenges that might otherwise remain hidden until they materialise as financial or regulatory issues.

Statements from ERM and Auquan Leadership

According to Andrew Radcliff, Global Service Leader for Mergers & Acquisitions at ERM, the collaboration with Auquan enhances the firm’s capacity to serve clients “as demand for sustainability advisory accelerates and regulatory requirements become more complex.” Radcliff highlighted that agentic AI enables rapid delivery of data-driven insights that help mitigate risk and enhance investment decisions.

Chandini Jain, CEO of Auquan, emphasised that ESG risk assessment “is among the most data-intensive and time-consuming work in finance.” Jain stated that partnering with ERM — a respected name in sustainability consulting — helps empower firms to focus strategic effort on high-value work while automating routine data gathering and analysis.

What This Means for Clients

For institutional investors and advisory teams, the integration of agentic AI into sustainability workflows promises several benefits:

• Faster Due Diligence: AI agents can rapidly analyse large volumes of unstructured and structured data to surface risk signals.
• Deeper ESG Insights: Automated monitoring across global sources increases coverage and reduces blind spots.
• Resource Efficiency: By automating repetitive tasks, organisations can reallocate human expertise to nuanced interpretation and decision-making.
• Scalable Monitoring: Continuous AI monitoring helps firms stay updated on dynamic risk environments with minimal delay.

Broader Implications for AI and Sustainability

The partnership between ERM and Auquan reflects a broader trend of integrating agentic AI into high-complexity domains such as sustainability, risk management and investment analysis. As organisations grapple with growing data volumes and regulatory oversight, agent-driven systems may become indispensable for delivering timely, reliable and scalable intelligence.

At the same time, the shift toward autonomous AI raises important questions about governance, model transparency and human oversight — considerations that ERM and similar consulting firms will likely address as part of broader deployment strategies.

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