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Portfolio Company ESG Data Collection

Portfolio company ESG data collection where each company confirms prefilled values and no outlier reaches an LP unexplained

Each company confirms prefilled values, and no outlier reaches an LP unexplained.

See one case, screen by screen ↓
demo86%of 1,464 values prefilled from the companies' own documents, each cited to its page
demo37,934t CO₂eof overstated Scope 2 taken out of one fund's total before any LP saw it — kWh typed as MWh
demo20languagesof company documents read in the original, with the passage shown beside the English
target0outliersreaching an LP report unexplained
In short

What is Portfolio Company ESG Data Collection?

Portfolio Company ESG Data Collection is ESG data management software for a GP's annual portfolio company ESG data collection: it collects, checks and benchmarks the ESG metrics private portfolio companies report each year, such as the EDCI metric set. Seven AI agents prefill values from documents the company already shared, cited to the page, follow up in the company's language and find the likely cause of every outlier. Each company confirms its own values, an analyst prepares each fund's dataset and the ESG lead approves it before any LP sees it.

AI in asset management: a buyer's guide to agentic AI for investment managers →

Updated

The problem

Why portfolio company ESG data collection still takes up to twelve weeks

Portfolio company ESG data collection starts every spring, when a GP's ESG team asks each portfolio company for the same industry metric set — the EDCI metrics of the ESG Data Convergence Initiative, which more than 9,000 private companies now report: Scope 1 and 2 emissions, electricity and renewable share, a decarbonization plan, women on the board and in the C-suite, recordable injuries and days lost, net new hires, turnover and the engagement survey. It goes out as a blank survey or a spreadsheet to a CFO who forwards it to facilities, HR and finance, and the answers come back in different units, on different boundaries and definitions from last year.

Then the chase begins: analysts email, deal teams are asked to nudge, and a campaign can take up to twelve weeks while the industry submission, the LP report and, for EU funds, the SFDR principal adverse impact statement all fall due between April and June. Cleaning happens by hand in spreadsheets with no audit trail. One site billed in kilowatt-hours and typed as megawatt-hours can make a company's emissions intensity jump 340%, and in private equity ESG reporting a wrong number in an LP report reads as a misleading ESG claim.

typical9,000+companiesnow report the industry ESG metric set each spring
typical12weeksthe longest GPs and companies reported spending to collect a year's ESG data
typical$19MSEC penalty in 2023 over ESG claims that did not match practice
Where one fund's annual ESG campaign goes, in working daysestimated
By hand54 days
With the solution14 days
  • Scoping companies, metric sets and contacts by fund3 → 1 d
  • Sending surveys and answering company questions4 → 1 d
  • Chasing companies and deal teams25 → 6 d
  • Checking units, boundaries and definitions10 → 2 d
  • Benchmarking and approving the fund dataset4 → 1 d
  • Drafting the LP section, industry file and SFDR table8 → 3 d

Estimated split for one fund's campaign, by hand and with the solution. The agents' reading, checking and drafting runs in hours; the days that remain are companies confirming, deal teams explaining and the ESG lead approving.

How it works

How a company's data moves

Seven agents prefill, check, chase and benchmark every company; the company confirms and the ESG lead approves.

What comes in
Documents in120 companies, 6 funds · bills, accounts, HR reports; any language
Agents at work
Campaign agentscope by fund
Then
Prefill agentcited to the page
Carbon agentrecompute Scope 1 and 2
Then
Follow-up agentconfirm-or-correct forms
Outlier agentcause, not just flag
Then
Benchmark agent
Reporting agentapproved data only
A person decides
Company, deal team, ESG leadconfirm, explain, approve
What comes out
Confirmed by each company
Fund datasets approved
LP and SFDR outputs, cited
One case, step by step

One fund's portfolio company ESG data, from a 340% outlier to an approved dataset

Quillfield Capital's private markets arm is GP to six funds holding 120 portfolio companies that report in 20 languages from 33 countries. The 2027 campaign, for FY2026 data, launched on February 1; companies confirm by Friday, March 26. It is Tuesday, March 16, 9:40 a.m. in New York. Here is what happens next, screen by screen, in the working solution.

  1. 019:40 a.m.

    Four numbers, one next step each, and a question for the agents

    Claire Ashdown · ESG Lead, Private Markets

    Claire's home shows 71 of 120 companies confirmed, 86% of values prefilled from documents (1,263 of 1,464), 23 outliers to explain and 0 of 6 fund datasets approved. Top of Needs you: Fennick Logistics, emissions intensity up 340%, the last open item in Quillfield Capital Partners V (QCP V). She types “Why is Fennick up 340%?” and the Outlier agent answers with the bill and the tracker cited: the Laredo cross-dock's 9 bills total 102,350 kWh, the tracker lists 102,350 MWh; corrected, intensity is 25.9, down 3.5%.

    “The agents found kWh entered as MWh. The deal team explained; the correction is with Fennick’s CFO. It is the last open item in QCP V.”

  2. 02Prefilled, not surveyed

    A French bill, read in French, cited to its page

    Prefill agent

    The confirmation grid puts companies down the side and the 13 metrics across the top: blue cells prefilled by agents and waiting for the company, green confirmed, gray missing, red outliers. In the European Mid-Market III fund, Atelier Dumesnil's electricity reads 3,391 MWh, prefilled at 92% confidence from page 2 of its French electricity report. The side panel shows the original sentence — “La consommation d'électricité s'élève à 3 391 MWh” — against last year's 3,332 MWh, a change of 2%.

    Prefill agent: below 90% confidence it leaves the value for the company to answer; it leaves a value empty rather than guess.

  3. 03In the company's language

    A confirm-only form, in German

    Marcus Hartmann · CFO, Brandauer Verpackung GmbH

    Companies never see the grid. This is what Brandauer's CFO sees in Quillfield's company portal: the form in German, each value already filled, each with its source — Stromverbrauch 27,640 MWh from the Nachhaltigkeitsbericht, Seite 14 — and two buttons, Bestätigen or Korrigieren. Six of 13 are confirmed. The renewable share of 61%, up from 18% because both plants buy guarantees of origin from January 2026, is marked as under review by Quillfield.

    “Only the company confirms its values.”

  4. 04March 12, 7:06 p.m.

    Fennick's Scope 2 cell turns red

    Outlier agent

    Fennick's facilities manager, Rob Haldane, uploaded an energy tracker on March 12: 124,728 MWh of electricity. The Carbon agent computed Scope 2 at 46,274 t against 8,165 t last year. The Outlier agent compared every value with the confirmed FY2025 dataset and 86 US logistics peers, flagged emissions intensity up 340% — 117.9 t per $M of revenue against a peer median of 31.2 — and routed it to the QCP V deal team.

    Likely cause: “Units: one site's bills are in kWh but were entered as MWh (Laredo cross-dock).”

  5. 05The evidence

    The tracker row beside the bill, 1,000 times apart

    Prefill agent

    The outlier page shows the jump against the peer band, then where it came from: Fennick's tracker lists the Laredo cross-dock at 102,350.00 MWh, while the nine Rio Bravo Electric Cooperative bills for the site total 102,350 kWh. The other 13 sites are billed in MWh by Gulfline Energy Services and total 22,377.65 MWh. 22,377.65 + 102.35 = 22,480 MWh. Laredo opened in April 2026, on a co-op that bills in kilowatt-hours.

    Outlier agent: never changes a value; always names a likely cause and its source.

  6. 06Replay the check

    How the agents reached it, step by step

    Claire Ashdown · ESG Lead, Private Markets

    Claire replays the check. Compared FY2026 with FY2025: intensity 26.8 to 117.9. Placed it against 86 US logistics peers: median 31.2, upper quartile 47.8. Ruled out growth: revenue up 5.9%, staff up 3.2%, sites 13 to 14. Re-read the bills behind electricity. Recomputed Scope 2: 22,480 MWh × 0.371 = 8,340 t. Routed to the QCP V deal team, Graham Holt and Mateo Ruiz.

    Carbon agent: recomputes from activity data with a versioned emission factor set (v2025.1) and never overwrites a company figure.

  7. 078:55 a.m., then 9:45 a.m.

    The deal team explains, and the CFO confirms in her own form

    Dana Whitcomb · CFO, Fennick Logistics

    Mateo Ruiz checked with Fennick's facilities team at 8:55 a.m. and agreed with the correction; at 8:57 the Follow-up agent put it in Dana's form with the bills attached. Signed in to the company portal, Dana sees only Fennick: “One value needs your confirmation” — electricity 124,728 MWh struck through, 22,480 MWh proposed, Scope 2 8,340 t. She confirms, ticks the attestation and signs. The outlier closes under rule R-07.

    Rule R-07 closes an outlier on its own only when the agents propose, the deal team explains and the company confirms.

  8. 089:47 a.m.

    The fund dataset is approved, by someone who did not prepare it

    Claire Ashdown · ESG Lead, Private Markets

    Tomás prepared the QCP V dataset at 9:12 a.m. — 24 companies, 312 values — with one open item, Fennick's electricity. With Fennick confirmed, all six checks pass — every company confirmed and signed, no open outliers, no missing values, every value with a source page or a signed company entry, no value changed after confirmation, units and boundaries checked. Claire approves with reason code DS-01. QCP V's Scope 1 + 2 is 148,589 t, up 3.6% on FY2025 — not 186,523 t, up 30%.

    “Approval opens when every check passes. The preparer cannot approve.”

  9. 09From approved data only

    The LP report section, every number cited

    Reporting agent

    The Reporting agent drafts the QCP V section of the annual LP ESG report from the approved dataset — climate, data quality, intensity, people, governance — with every number linked to its company confirmation and source page, including a plain note that one company's electricity was corrected before reporting. Claire asks where 148,589 t comes from: 62,595 t Scope 1 and 85,994 t Scope 2 across 24 companies, with Fennick at 8,340 t after its CFO confirmed.

    “I never send anything to an LP.” Investor relations edits and marks the draft ready; compliance releases it.

  10. 10On the record

    Every step, by people and agents, hash-chained

    Gideon Park · Internal Audit

    The audit trail holds the whole case: the Outlier agent's flag, the Prefill agent's re-read of nine bills, the Carbon agent's proposal with factor set v2025.1, Mateo's explanation, Dana's confirmation and attestation, the R-07 close, Tomás preparing as maker and Claire approving with DS-01 — each with who, which agent version, the evidence, the reason code and a hash. Internal audit can verify the chain and export an evidence pack.

Who it’s for

Built for everyone who touches a company's ESG numbers.

The same campaign, seen by five of the people who carry it — what the spring looked like with blank surveys, and what it looks like now.

CA
Claire AshdownESG Lead, Private Markets · runs the campaign for 6 funds and 120 companies
ESG Lead, Private Markets
Before
Owns the spring campaign across six funds from spreadsheets and email, and finds out what does not add up when the LP report is already in draft.
Now
Opens four numbers and one next step each, asks the agents why a value moved, and approves each fund's dataset only when every check passes.
TB
Tomás BeckerESG Analyst · reviews prefills and outliers, prepares each fund's dataset
ESG Analyst
Before
Retypes survey answers, checks units, scopes and definitions by hand, and chases the companies that never opened the spreadsheet.
Now
Sees what the agents filled and where each value came from, accepts what is proven, questions what is not, and prepares the dataset as maker.
MR
Mateo RuizAssociate, Deal Team, QCP IV and V · explains outliers for the companies he knows
Associate, Deal Team
Before
Gets forwarded emails asking why a company's numbers look wrong, weeks after the survey went out.
Now
Reads the agents' likely cause with the bill beside the tracker, checks it with the company once, and writes the explanation in the outlier itself.
DW
Dana WhitcombPortfolio company CFO · confirms her company's values once a year
CFO, Fennick Logistics
Before
Receives a blank survey every spring and spends days collecting answers from facilities, HR and finance.
Now
Signs in to a form already filled from documents Fennick shared, confirms or corrects each value with its source, and signs the attestation.
IC
Ines CallowayInvestor Relations Manager · drafts the LP ESG report and questionnaires
Investor Relations Manager
Before
Writes the annual LP ESG section and answers LP questionnaires from numbers she cannot trace back.
Now
Edits a cited draft built from the approved dataset only and marks it ready; compliance releases it.
Built on the engine

7 agents. Each with one job, and hard limits.

Seven agents prefill, check, chase and benchmark every company; the company confirms and the ESG lead approves.

Campaign agent

Scopes each fund's campaign from the fund administrator's company list, last year's campaign and the CRM: companies new and exited, the metric set per fund, contacts, schedule and languages. It also proposes adding a company acquired mid-campaign, for the ESG lead to approve.

  • Never launches a campaign — the ESG lead approves
  • Never contacts a company
Prefill agent

Fills each metric from documents the company already shared — utility bills, audited accounts, HR and safety reports, board minutes — in their own language, with the unit and the page, converting units, and re-reads documents when another agent asks.

  • Cites a page for every value
  • Below 90% confidence leaves the value for the company; never invents one
  • Never confirms for a company
Carbon agent

Redoes the Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions calculation from activity data with versioned emission factors, checks the company's figure and proposes a correction when the two differ.

  • Never overwrites a company figure
  • Records the factor version it used
  • Flags an analyst when figures differ by more than 10%
Follow-up agent

Sends confirm-or-correct forms and reminders in each company's language, asks only for what is still open, predicts who will miss the deadline, asks the deal team to call and proposes escalation to an operating partner.

  • Writes only to contacts on file in the CRM
  • Never sends outside 8 a.m.–6 p.m. local time
  • Escalation to an operating partner needs the ESG lead's approval
Outlier agent

Compares every value with last year, sector peers and the company's own other values; above a 50% change, three times the peer median or an impossible value, it finds the likely cause in the documents and routes it to the deal team, the company or an analyst.

  • Never changes a value
  • Always names a likely cause and its source
Benchmark agent

Places each company and fund against the licensed peer benchmark and Quillfield's own history, and drafts the line the LP report will use once the fund dataset is approved.

  • Never publishes
  • Holds back open outliers until they are explained
Reporting agent

Builds the industry submission file, the LP report section, the SFDR principal adverse impact table and LP questionnaire answers, citing every number to its company confirmation and source page.

  • Approved fund datasets only
  • Never releases — investor relations drafts and compliance releases
  • Never sends anything to an LP
Company CFO, deal team, ESG analyst and lead

Confirm, explain, prepare, approve. The agents propose; a named person decides.

Ask in plain words

Ask about any company, value or fund

Ask about any company, value or fund in the campaign, or tell the agents what to do. Every answer cites the document it came from, and nothing changes or goes out without a person.

Why is Fennick up 340%?

One site's bills are in kWh but were entered as MWh. The Laredo cross-dock's 9 bills total 102,350 kWh, and Fennick's tracker lists 102,350 MWh. Corrected, electricity is 22,480 MWh, Scope 2 is 8,340 t and intensity is 25.9, down 3.5%. The deal team agreed; the CFO has the correction.

Which companies will miss the March 26 deadline?

8 companies are at risk. None has opened its form after reminders in its own language and a deal team call request. The Follow-up agent proposes escalating each to its operating partner; that needs your approval.

How much of our data is reported, not estimated?

1,263 of 1,464 values (86%) were prefilled from the companies' own documents, each with its page; the rest come from the company in the form. Nothing is estimated silently: a value without a document stays gray until the company answers.

Where does 148,589 t come from?

QCP V's Scope 1 + 2 is the sum of its 24 companies' confirmed values: 62,595 t Scope 1 and 85,994 t Scope 2. It includes Fennick at 8,340 t Scope 2 after its CFO confirmed the Laredo correction.

Every screen

The working solution, as it ships.

13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.

Today: the ESG campaign at a glanceCompanies confirmed, values prefilled from documents, outliers to explain and fund datasets approved; what needs the ESG lead; what the agents did overnight, every line cited; and a cited answer to “Why is Fennick up 340%?”.
The ESG data confirmation gridPortfolio companies down the side and the EDCI metrics, plus a cyber metric, across the top — blue prefilled, green confirmed, gray missing, red outlier — with a French electricity report cited to its page and quoted in the original.
The company's confirm-only form, in GermanWhat a portfolio company CFO sees instead of a blank ESG survey: every value prefilled with its source page, in the company's language, to confirm or correct.
An outlier in the gridFennick Logistics' Scope 2 cell in red: 46,274 t against 8,165 t last year, the source tracker, and the Outlier agent's likely cause — kWh entered as MWh.
The outlier, with its evidenceEmissions intensity against the peer band, the tracker row beside the utility bills 1,000 times apart, and the conversation between the agents and the deal team.
Replay the agents' checkEach step the agents took — last year, 86 peers, growth ruled out, bills re-read, Scope 2 emissions recalculated — with timings, then who it was routed to.
The correction, confirmed by the companySigned in to the company portal, Fennick's CFO sees the proposed correction with the bills cited and the deal team's note, ready to confirm 22,480 MWh.
Fund dataset sign-offPrepared by an ESG analyst, approved by the ESG lead with DS-01 after six checks pass, what changed since FY2025, and the Reporting agent's re-check of the fund dataset before any LP output uses it.
LP ESG report from approved dataThe fund's annual LP ESG section drafted from the approved dataset with every number cited, and the Reporting agent answering where a total comes from.
Every outlier with its likely causeOpen outliers by company with the change, the likely cause the agents found — real change, boundary change, definition, incomplete data, conflict — who it waits on and its age.
Follow-up in each company's languageThe companies still to confirm with contact, language, predicted risk and next step, the Follow-up agent's ladder, and escalations that wait for the ESG lead.
Peer benchmarks, outliers held backA fund's median emissions intensity against its peer median, each company against its sector peers, an open outlier held back, and the Benchmark agent's draft LP line.
The ESG audit trailEvery event by people and agents with the agent version, evidence, reason code and hash; verify the chain or export an evidence pack.
Governance

Built for portfolio company ESG data collection that stands up to LPs: cited, confirmed, signed.

Every value citedEach value opens its source document and page, in the original language beside the English, or a signed company entry. Every agent message cites its source too.
The company confirmsOnly the company confirms its own values, with a signed attestation; a company user sees only its own company. Quillfield never confirms for it, and the agents never confirm, change or approve a value.
Maker and checker on every datasetAn ESG analyst prepares each fund's dataset and the ESG lead approves it — never the same person — only when every check passes. A confirmed value that changes goes back to the company and reopens an approved dataset.
LP outputs from approved data onlyThe industry submission, LP report section, SFDR table and questionnaire answers are built from approved datasets only. Investor relations drafts, compliance releases, an analyst generates the submission and the ESG lead submits it.
Decisions signed with a reason codeCorrections, outlier closes, dataset approvals, releases, extensions and escalations each carry a reason code and a name. Settings and new agent versions are proposed by the administrator and approved by the ESG lead.
Hash-chained, in each fund's regionThe audit trail records who, what, when, why, which evidence and which agent version, hash-chained and read-only, with an evidence pack export. Data stays in each fund's region; diversity is held as counts, never names.
Configuration

Your thresholds, checks and service levels

How every value is checked before a fund's dataset can be approved — set by the administrator, approved by the ESG lead, every change versioned and on the audit trail.

SettingDefaultChoose from
Outlier: change on last yearover 50%Escalated to the deal team with the likely cause
Outlier: distance from peersover 3 times the peer medianHeld back from benchmarks until explained
Impossible valuesshares over 100%, more women than seats, negative energyFlagged at once
Prefill only when confident90% or moreBelow it the company answers
Carbon cross-checkcompany figure and recomputed figure differ by over 10%Flagged to an analyst
Rule R-07: auto-closeagents' correction + deal team explanation + company confirmationCloses the outlier; logged
Deal team explains an outlierwithin 5 business daysThen the ESG lead is told; an analyst has 2 business days to accept or correct
Retention7 years after the fund yearapproved datasets and attestations kept for the life of the fund plus 7 years; SEC books-and-records rules require at least 5
Connections

An ESG data collection platform that works with the systems your portfolio data already lives in

Document management and deal data roomsutility bills, audited accounts, HR and safety reports, board minutes and sustainability reports, in any language
Portfolio monitoring systemrevenue, staff and board packs in; approved values written back
Fund administratorthe company list and ownership by fund
CRMCFO and deal team contacts — the only people the agents write to
Emission factor datagrid and fuel factors, versioned (2025 edition)
Investor portal and industry submissionreleased LP report sections, and the submission file in the initiative's template
What it changes

The difference, in numbers.

Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.

target
0
outliers reaching an LP report unexplained
Todayspreadsheets, no audit trail
With agentsevery jump explained and confirmed
target
4 in 5
values prefilled from the company's own documents, each with its page
prefilled
from documents on file
target
Days
to close each fund's dataset, not up to 12 weeks of chasing
Todayup to 12 weeks
With agentsdays

“demo” = seen in the working solution, on its sample data · “target” = the design goal, measured in the live solution · “estimated” = our estimate · “typical” = published figures (BCG with the ESG Data Convergence Initiative, 2025 — more than 9,000 portfolio companies reporting; a 2023 survey of about 100 GPs and portfolio companies by an ESG software provider — up to 12 weeks collecting ESG data; SEC enforcement orders, 2022–2024 — $4 million, $19 million and $17.5 million over ESG claims that did not match practice). Regulatory context: EU SFDR (2019/2088) and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/1288 on principal adverse impacts; SEC Rule 204-2 on books and records. Quillfield Capital and the people, companies, funds and documents named on this page are fictional — characters and sample data in the working solution.

Questions

What GPs ask about portfolio company ESG data collection.

What is Portfolio Company ESG Data Collection?

Portfolio Company ESG Data Collection is ESG data management software for a GP's annual portfolio company ESG data collection: it collects, checks and benchmarks the ESG metrics private portfolio companies report each year, such as the EDCI metric set. Seven AI agents prefill values from documents the company already shared, cited to the page, follow up in the company's language and find the likely cause of every outlier. Each company confirms its own values, an analyst prepares each fund's dataset and the ESG lead approves it before any LP sees it.

How do GPs collect ESG data from portfolio companies?

Usually with a blank survey or an ESG data collection template in Excel. With this solution, ESG data collection in private markets starts differently: each company gets a confirm-only form in its own language, prefilled from its utility bills, audited accounts, HR and safety reports and board minutes, each with its source page. In the working solution, 86% of 1,464 values arrive prefilled. The company confirms each value, corrects it with a reason and, if it has one, a supporting document, or marks a metric not tracked, then signs an attestation.

Does it support EDCI reporting?

Yes. It collects the common private-markets metric set — Scope 1 and 2 emissions, renewable electricity, decarbonization plans, board and C-suite diversity, injuries and days lost, net new hires, turnover and the employee survey, plus a cybersecurity incidents metric — and the Reporting agent builds each fund's industry submission file from its approved dataset only. An analyst generates the file and the ESG lead submits it.

How does it catch ESG data errors before they reach LPs?

The Outlier agent compares every value with last year, sector peers and the company's own other values, finds the likely cause in the documents — units, boundary change, definition, coverage, method, timing, a one-off — and routes it to whoever can resolve it. The Carbon agent redoes the Scope 2 emissions calculation from activity data with a versioned emission factor set, and checks Scope 1 the same way. In the demo, a site's kWh typed as MWh would have overstated one fund's Scope 2 by 37,934 t.

Can it produce the SFDR principal adverse impacts table and LP ESG questionnaire answers?

Yes, from approved data only. The Reporting agent drafts the table of SFDR principal adverse impacts — the PAI indicators — for an Article 8 fund, the annual LP ESG report section and LP questionnaire answers, with every number traced to the company's confirmation and source page. Investor relations edits and marks each draft ready, and compliance releases it, so ESG data collection and reporting run on the same approved numbers.

Does the AI change our ESG data or contact companies on its own?

No. The agents never confirm, change or approve a value, and write only to contacts on file, inside local working hours. Escalation to an operating partner needs the ESG lead's approval, and an outlier closes on its own only when the agents propose, the deal team explains and the company confirms.

Do people stay in control of each fund's dataset?

Yes. The company confirms, the deal team explains, an ESG analyst prepares each fund's dataset and the ESG lead approves it — never the person who prepared it — with a reason code. Every step, by people and agents, is on a hash-chained audit trail.

How long does it take to go live?

The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your metric sets per fund, last year's approved dataset, your company list and the systems that hold company documents — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. We will walk you through it on your own portfolio companies first.

See it on
your portfolio companies.

We'll run Portfolio Company ESG Data Collection on a sample of your own companies, their documents and last year's approved dataset.