Optimizing Large Language Models for ESG Activity Detection in Financial Texts

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Birti, Mattia, Maurino, Andrea, Osborne, Francesco
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Birti, Mattia
Maurino, Andrea
Osborne, Francesco
author_facet Birti, Mattia
Maurino, Andrea
Osborne, Francesco
contents The integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into corporate decision-making is a fundamental aspect of sustainable finance. However, ensuring that business practices align with evolving regulatory frameworks remains a persistent challenge. AI-driven solutions for automatically assessing the alignment of sustainability reports and non-financial disclosures with specific ESG activities could greatly support this process. Yet, this task remains complex due to the limitations of general-purpose Large Language Models (LLMs) in domain-specific contexts and the scarcity of structured, high-quality datasets. In this paper, we investigate the ability of current-generation LLMs to identify text related to environmental activities. Furthermore, we demonstrate that their performance can be significantly enhanced through fine-tuning on a combination of original and synthetically generated data. To this end, we introduce ESG-Activities, a benchmark dataset containing 1,325 labelled text segments classified according to the EU ESG taxonomy. Our experimental results show that fine-tuning on ESG-Activities significantly enhances classification accuracy, with open models such as Llama 7B and Gemma 7B outperforming large proprietary solutions in specific configurations. These findings have important implications for financial analysts, policymakers, and AI researchers seeking to enhance ESG transparency and compliance through advanced natural language processing techniques.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_21112
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimizing Large Language Models for ESG Activity Detection in Financial Texts
Birti, Mattia
Maurino, Andrea
Osborne, Francesco
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
Information Retrieval
The integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into corporate decision-making is a fundamental aspect of sustainable finance. However, ensuring that business practices align with evolving regulatory frameworks remains a persistent challenge. AI-driven solutions for automatically assessing the alignment of sustainability reports and non-financial disclosures with specific ESG activities could greatly support this process. Yet, this task remains complex due to the limitations of general-purpose Large Language Models (LLMs) in domain-specific contexts and the scarcity of structured, high-quality datasets. In this paper, we investigate the ability of current-generation LLMs to identify text related to environmental activities. Furthermore, we demonstrate that their performance can be significantly enhanced through fine-tuning on a combination of original and synthetically generated data. To this end, we introduce ESG-Activities, a benchmark dataset containing 1,325 labelled text segments classified according to the EU ESG taxonomy. Our experimental results show that fine-tuning on ESG-Activities significantly enhances classification accuracy, with open models such as Llama 7B and Gemma 7B outperforming large proprietary solutions in specific configurations. These findings have important implications for financial analysts, policymakers, and AI researchers seeking to enhance ESG transparency and compliance through advanced natural language processing techniques.
title Optimizing Large Language Models for ESG Activity Detection in Financial Texts
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.21112