Announcement of Consecutive Acquiring “AAA” Rating from MSCI ESG Research
-Promoting Continuous ESG Activities as “A Company That Provides Solutions to Social Issues”-

SHIFT Inc. (“SHIFT,” headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Masaru Tange, CEO and Representative Director) announced that it has consecutively acquired the top rating “AAA” from MSCI ESG Research. SHIFT acquired “A” rating in 2021, “AAA” in 2023. mainly due to its disclosure on human resources management and privacy and data security.

In 2024, SHIFT received a rating of AAA (on a scale of AAA-CCC) in the MSCI ESG Ratings assessment.

1. SHIFT’s ESG Activities
Since its foundation in 2005, SHIFT has continued its business activities based on its corporate philosophy, “we seek out new value concepts and work sincerely to provide value to the world.” In 2009, SHIFT launched a software testing business, providing software quality assurance services in a variety of industries, such as financial, retail, logistics, and entertainment.
There still exist social issues around the Japanese IT industry, such as excessive labor due to the shortage of IT personnel, chronic industrial structural problems, and security accidents and incidents including the leakage of personal information. As a company “supporting to produce sellable products and services,” SHIFT is committed to providing essential solutions to customers’ business issues. In working to resolve essential business issues, SHIFT has continued its growth with a wide variety of initiatives that also contribute to resolving social issues around the Japanese IT industry.

Currently, SHIFT is advancing initiatives from a wide range of perspectives, including supporting the development of safe, secure, and comfortable software through the quality assurance business, solving issues in the Japanese IT industry, such as eliminating shortages of IT personnel and reforming the industry structure, providing employment opportunities for diverse human resources, and reducing the environmental impact on society.

Besides initiatives for the Japanese IT industry, internally, SHIFT aims at creating and training IT human resources, improving the working conditions of employees (engineers), and ensuring that each employee is able to work while making full use of their own capabilities and develops a number of other personnel measures such as “Top-gun,” the internal system for career advancement, aligned with three axis “motivation,” “salary” and “peers.” In addition, a semi-yearly employee satisfaction survey is conducted for all employees to visualize each satisfaction as a numerical value. Based on the results of the satisfaction evaluation, SHIFT is developing new human resource measures daily, with detailed tuning that SHIFT provides a truly meaningful working environment. As a result, the annual turnover rate was 6.4%*1, which is significantly lower than the industry level. Moreover, the average annual salary increase rate was 10.9% for men and 11.9% for women*2. In addition to creating and training IT human resources and improving the working conditions of employees (engineers), SHIFT is also working to create an environment in which everyone working in SHIFT can work with enthusiasm by achieving a fair assessment without any gender gaps.

As a result of promoting these initiatives and disclosure of measures and performances on human resources management, which is the “core” of our business, and information securities, that we are entrusted by our customers, SHIFT achieved “A” from MSCI ESG rating in December 2021*3 and “AAA” in March 2023*4. SHIFT regards that the consecutive acquiring the top rating is a result of expansion of measures and disclosures.

SHIFT is very delighted to have consecutively acquired the top rating since among 239 constituents of MSCI Japan ESG Select Leaders Index, 37 companies achieve the top rating “AAA,” and only 9 from IT industry*5.

Going forward, while promoting dialogue with stakeholders, SHIFT will strive to become a company that solves social issues, and further work to grow the business of SHIFT Group as a whole and expand the provision of social value.

You may read our ESG initiatives and performances further from the link below.
https://en.shiftinc.jp/ir/esg/

*1 Performances in FY2023 (parent basis)

*2 Performances in FY2023 (parent basis)

*3 On December 15th, 2021, SHIFT has announced “Announcement of Acquiring “A” Rating from MSCI ESG Research”
https://en.shiftinc.jp/news_en/announcement-of-acquired-a-rating-from-msci-esg-research/

*4 On April 3rd, 2023, SHIFT has announced “Announcement of Acquiring “AAA” Rating from MSCI ESG Research”
https://en.shiftinc.jp/news_en/announcement-of-acquiring-aaa-rating-from-msci-esg-research/

*5 Aggregated by SHIFT based on a constituent list of “MSCI Japan ESG Select Leaders Index”
https://www.msci.com/msci-japan-esg-select-leaders-index-jp

2. About MSCI ESG Rating Assessment
MSCI ESG Research provides MSCI ESG Ratings on global public and a few private companies on a scale of AAA (leader) to CCC (laggard), according to exposure to industry-specific ESG risks and the ability to manage those risks relative to peers.
https://www.msci.com/documents/1296102/15233886/MSCI-ESG-Ratings-Brochure-cbr-en.pdf/7fb1ae78-6825-63cd-5b84-f4a411171d34

3. About MSCI ESG Research
MSCI ESG Research provides in-depth research, ratings and analysis of the environmental, social and governance-related business practices of thousands of companies worldwide. Our research is designed to provide critical insights that can help institutional investors identify risks and opportunities that traditional investment research may overlook. The MSCI ESG Ratings are also used in the construction of the MSCI ESG Indexes, produced by MSCI, Inc.
https://www.msci.com/our-solutions/esg-investing

THE USE BY SHIFT OF ANY MSCI ESG RESEARCH LLC OR ITS AFFILIATES (“MSCI”) DATA, AND THE USE OF MSCI LOGOS, TRADEMARKS, SERVICE MARKS OR INDEX NAMES HEREIN, DO NOT CONSTITUTE A SPONSORSHIP, ENDORSEMENT, RECOMMENDATION, OR PROMOTION OF SHIFT BY MSCI. MSCI SERVICES AND DATA ARE THE PROPERTY OF MSCI OR ITS INFORMATION PROVIDERS, AND ARE PROVIDED ‘AS-IS’ AND WITHOUT WARRANTY. MSCI NAMES AND LOGOS ARE TRADEMARKS OR SERVICE MARKS OF MSCI.