Fintech · ESG & Islamic Finance Data · San Francisco
The quiet data company that decides whether your money matches your values - ESG, ethical, or Shariah.
Above: The IdealRatings mark. For twenty years it has sat, unseen, inside the screening engines of banks and index providers - the referee nobody in the stands ever notices.
The Business
Every fund that promises to be "sustainable" or "Shariah-compliant" is making a claim about thousands of individual securities. IdealRatings is the company that checks the claim. Founded in San Francisco in 2006 by Mohamed Donia and Youssri Helmy, it turns a messy, judgment-heavy question - is this holding acceptable? - into structured data that institutions can trust and build products on.
The firm runs two business lines from one underlying engine. The first, ESG & Responsible Investment Solutions, produces qualitative research, ESG scores and ratings, granular ESG metrics, business-involvement flags and the regulatory-reporting feeds asset managers need for rules like Europe's SFDR and the EU Taxonomy. The second, Islamic Finance Solutions, screens equities, fixed income, REITs and Sukuk against Shariah standards - and calculates purification, the exact portion of non-compliant income a portfolio must give away.
What makes the combination unusual is that most vendors pick a lane. IdealRatings serves ESG investors and Islamic finance institutions from the same data platform, on the logic that both audiences are really asking one question with different rulebooks: does this security belong in a values-based portfolio? That shared machinery is the company's quiet advantage - and the reason a single research operation can address two markets many treat as unrelated.
The output is delivered as subscription, web-based tools and data feeds, plus licensed methodologies that power third-party benchmarks. IdealRatings does not run a consumer app or a viral product. It is infrastructure - the plumbing beneath ethical portfolios that end-investors never see but rely on all the same.
IdealRatings has built a reputation as an excellent independent data vendor with par-excellence product solutions and client services. — IdealRatings, company statement
Who Uses It
IdealRatings' solutions are licensed by leading financial institutions in over 25 countries. Its customers are not retail investors - they are the firms that build the products retail investors buy.
Relative presence across client types, illustrative of IdealRatings' stated customer base. Not a market-share measurement.
The Problem & The Edge
Values-based screening is deceptively difficult. Standards shift, disclosure is inconsistent, and a single wrong flag can put a non-compliant holding in a fund that promised otherwise. On the Shariah side, compliance rests on interpretive standards such as those from AAOIFI; on the ESG side, regulation keeps raising the bar with new disclosure regimes. Every increase in complexity makes doing this in-house harder and buying it from a specialist easier.
IdealRatings' differentiator is independence paired with breadth. As a ratings provider, its value is only as good as its neutrality, which is why it signed ICMA's voluntary Code of Conduct for ESG Ratings and Data Products Providers. And where many competitors focus on ESG alone, IdealRatings offers one of the largest global universes for Shariah equity, fixed income and REIT screening - a coverage footprint that larger, ESG-only houses do not match.
Against giants like MSCI, Sustainalytics, S&P Global and LSEG/Refinitiv on the ESG side, IdealRatings competes not by out-scaling them but by owning the intersection: the firms that need both rigorous ESG data and credible Islamic finance screening find few alternatives that do both well.
The Toolkit
| Product | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Equity Screening | Shariah and ethical screening across 40,000+ companies, with compliance monitoring and controversial-activity detection. |
| ESG Scores & Ratings | Quantitative ESG scores and ratings with customizable parameters, KPIs and metrics. |
| ESG Qualitative & Metric Data | Research-driven qualitative datasets and granular environmental, social and governance metrics. |
| Business Involvement Data | Flags exposure to controversial activities plus revenue segregation for exclusion screening. |
| Regulatory Reporting | Data to support SFDR, EU Taxonomy and other disclosure requirements. |
| Custom Indexes | Custom-built Shariah and ESG index construction that powers third-party benchmarks. |
| Purification Services | Calculates the portion of income a Shariah portfolio must purify. |
| Sukuk & Fixed Income Screening | Shariah screening behind the Bloomberg Sukuk indicator and FTSE IdealRatings Sukuk index series. |
How It Works & Who It Works With
IdealRatings runs a B2B subscription and licensing model: clients pay for web-based screening tools and data feeds, while index providers and platforms license its methodology. Distribution reaches beyond direct sales - datasets are available on the AWS Marketplace, and its compliance assessment is embedded in flagship products from Bloomberg and FTSE Russell.
Provides the Shariah compliance assessment powering the Bloomberg Shariah Sukuk indices and the Sukuk indicator on the Bloomberg Terminal.
2026Co-branded FTSE IdealRatings Islamic index series and the Broad US Dollar Sukuk index series.
OngoingDistributes IdealRatings ESG datasets through AWS Data Exchange for cloud-native data consumers.
OngoingSigned the voluntary Code of Conduct for ESG Ratings and Data Products Providers.
CommitmentLicensed IdealRatings' equity screening solution for a Shariah-compliant fund.
ClientThe Story So Far
Mohamed Donia and Youssri Helmy launch IdealRatings to serve Islamic finance and responsible-investment markets.
The firm builds one of the largest global universes for Shariah-compliant equity and REIT screening.
Co-branded Islamic index benchmarks launch with FTSE Russell / LSEG.
New ESG scores, metric and regulatory-reporting datasets add SFDR and EU Taxonomy coverage.
Recognized among leading ESG fintech firms for a third consecutive year.
Bloomberg launches Shariah Sukuk indices using IdealRatings' AAOIFI-based assessment as the Sukuk market tops $1 trillion.
The Founder
Before IdealRatings, Mohamed Donia co-founded Cogency Inc., a Silicon Valley startup where he helped shape solutions for hedge funds and funds of funds. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Ain Shams University in Cairo. The path from Cairo engineering to Bloomberg-grade Islamic finance benchmarks was not obvious - and that unusual combination of technical and financial-services background became the company's founding edge.
Alongside co-founder Youssri Helmy, Donia has kept IdealRatings on a single, patient thesis for two decades: that responsible and faith-based investing would need trustworthy, independent data - and that the firm willing to do the unglamorous screening work would still be standing when the market caught up. Three consecutive ESGFinTech100 selections suggest it did.
Watch & Learn
Explore IdealRatings' own explainers and coverage of its work:
Questions
It provides independent data, screening tools and ratings that let investors align portfolios with ESG, ethical and Shariah-compliance standards across equities, fixed income, REITs and Sukuk.
It was co-founded in 2006 in San Francisco by Mohamed Donia (CEO) and Youssri Helmy.
Asset managers, banks, brokerages, robo-advisors, stock exchanges and index providers in more than 25 countries.
Its Shariah compliance assessment powers the Bloomberg Shariah Sukuk indices and the Sukuk indicator on the Bloomberg Terminal, and it co-brands the FTSE IdealRatings Islamic and Sukuk index series with FTSE Russell.
Through B2B subscriptions and licensing of its data feeds, screening tools and index methodologies, distributed directly and via channels like the AWS Marketplace.
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