1.1 Purpose of the Standard

For the unlisted infrastructure asset class to develop into a fully-fledged investment asset class, it must overcome many barriers. A key one is the creation of investment products that enable investors to access its characteristics, and this, in turn, requires broad-based indices describing risk and returns in a representative manner. To this end, Scientific Infra & Private Assets has developed a global data standard to assist in the collection and standardisation of reporting with respect to infrastructure investments.

All data items referred to in this standard should be readily available to infrastructure investors and allow for the estimation of risk and returns in unlisted infrastructure equity and debt investments.

Our starting point is the classification of infrastructure companies provided by TICCS®.

TICCS® classifies infrastructure companies across four pillars:

• Business risk: What kind of revenue risk is an infrastructure company exposed to?

• Industrial activity: What kind of physical asset does the company own providing what kind of service? 

• Geoeconomic: Is the company exposed to global, regional or local economic forces and counterparties? 

• Corporate governance: Is the company dedicated to delivering only one project? What role do creditors play in the event of a default?  

TICCS® ensures that infrastructure investments are categorised according to the fundamental characteristics that drive risk and returns in unlisted infrastructure companies and that enable their dynamic classification over time as they evolve and mature. It provides a truly global classification of investable infrastructure, giving greater clarity on factors that drive returns and risk of this asset class.

Scientific Infra & Private Assets's Infrastructure Investment Data Standard describes the cash flow, event, and other data required to compute the performance and risk of investments in the equity or debt of unlisted infrastructure companies and build indices documenting the characteristics of the unlisted infrastructure asset class.