Within Enento Group, which UC is a part of, the aim and part of the core business is to develop sustainable services. With a big current focus on sustainability and ESG*, which is also increasing in the rest of the banking and finance sector, Enento’s ESG offering in the Nordics is expanding.
Riku Salminen, Development Director at Enento Group, talks about the increasing sustainability focus and shares some exciting developments within the ESG area at Enento.
How does Enento Group work proactively to make sure we develop sustainable services in general?
Enento Group is a pioneer as a developer of sustainability information and services in the Nordics. The market demand for better sustainability data and value-added services is increasing, due to the fact that people and organizations are getting more conscious about climate change and the impact it has on our wellbeing and the future of our planet. One of the drivers is also the new legislation i.e EU Taxonomy that is a classification system to determine when business activity is sustainable, and to redirect the capital flows to more sustainable activities.
What is a sustainable service for Enento?
When we talk about sustainability services, we often refer to the term ESG, which is a framework to evaluate how sustainable and transparent the organization is in terms of its Environmental responsibility, Social responsibility, and corporate Governance.
Can you give some examples of services you are involved in developing right now?
This is my favorite subject. During Q2-2021 we kicked off several development projects to create new ESG services at a Nordic and local level.
At the Nordic level, we are developing a completely new online service to collect ESG data directly from companies. For now, we call this service ESG Tool. Until now Asiakastieto’s ESG Report, also a part of Enento Group in Finland, has been based on official information from public registers. With ESG Tool, we want to expand the ESG Report with new sustainability information collected from companies themselves to complete the picture of their corporate responsibility.
In Finland we recently launched a new service called ESG Check, which uses a traffic light model to show a summary of the state of sustainability of the company; Positive / Nothing to note / Notice. Now we are developing the next generation of our ESG Report with completely new UI and UX which is based on the Nordic Design System and implementing several new data points, like ecolabels, company net impact, information security and GDPR compliance, contractor’s liability information, and industry information about the energy usage and environmental taxes
At UC in Sweden, we are developing our very first ESG Report about Swedish companies. The launch is planned to happen during Q1-2022, so we live in exciting times.
Describe how the ESG report works?
ESG Report in Finland is available in our online store to any customers and via SAKU online portal to our contract customers. With our API, customers can also integrate the ESG data to be used within their systems, and with the monitoring service they can follow up changes in their customer base in real-time. The companies in the Finance sector are among the heavy users of our ESG Report. They use the sustainability information as part of decision processes together with credit information to screen sustainable companies among their customers.
Do you plan to develop those services to the other Nordic countries?
Yes, that is our plan, like mentioned above the ESG Report for Swedish companies is soon to be launched at UC in Sweden. We strongly believe that a sustainability offering presents a truly Nordic growth opportunity for Enento.
Why do you think there is an extra need for that kind of service during the next years?
Sustainability is everywhere, in the TV news, in the commercials, in the product packages, in the corporate sites, annual reports, and so on. And there is a reason for that. The reason is simple. Consumers are looking for sustainable products. Employees are looking for responsible companies. Investors are looking for green investment opportunities. Creditors and shareholders are requesting transparent sustainability reporting from companies.
Thus, the number of ESG data will explode in the coming years and we must collect and enhance the data for better decision making. It’s now time to move on from “talk the talk” to “walk the walk”.
*The term ESG stands for Environmental impacts, Social Responsibility, and Corporate Governance.