Ensuring Sustainability For Businesses

Research Strategy Technology
Ghaffar Sethar

March 1, 2023

Ensuring Sustainability For Businesses

Environmental protection and sustainability are now generally acknowledged as one of the leading issues plaguing our planet. Implementing the 3 Rs of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle can help lessen the demand for natural fuels.

Banks and other financial institutions have an important role to play in reducing carbon pollution, streamlining, or improving the process by providing stakeholders with the right expertise and resources.

The "Go Green" movement strongly emphasizes sustainable green finance. Green FinTech is a comparatively new concept in finance, incorporating environmental concerns into its lending principles. Promoting sustainable FinTech involves using eco-friendly practices that benefit the environment.

This post will discuss the benefits of sustainable FinTech and what the top companies are doing right when creating a sustainable finance industry. However, we'll first discuss what sustainable FinTech is.

What Is Sustainable FinTech?

A "green business" or sustainable FinTech company has little to no adverse effects on the local or global ecosystem, society, community, or economy. It is a company that seeks to achieve triple earnings. Progressive human rights and environmental policies are frequently found in sustainable FinTech companies. 

Below are some criteria for green FinTech businesses: 

  • They integrate the principles of sustainable growth into every business decision 
  • They deliver organic services and products 
  • They have shown a solid commitment to eco-conscious methods

Sustainable Companies Outperform Non-sustainable Counterparts

A survey shows roughly two-thirds of customers want their challenger bank to become more environmentally friendly. Half of them are prepared to switch banks if they don't see any improvement. All due to the wide variety of service suppliers available today. Customers favor ethically conscious companies. Those who fail to recognize this reality are left in the dark.

Supervisory Expectations

Regulations and oversight carried out by the authorities are other compelling reasons why fintech businesses should begin implementing financially sustainable policies. For instance, ESG analytics are mandated for all European institutions. This lessens "greenwashing" which falsely represents that a company's goods are more environmentally friendly.

The Future Is Sustainable

Let's face it; issues like global warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, and ozone layer destruction are bigger than just commerce and profit. Fortunately, many businesses recognize this and voluntarily contribute to the fight against climate change, making sustainability in the financial industry a prominent trend. They only have an interest in the present and future generations.

Green FinTech Companies And Their Solutions 

Here is just a small sample of all the green fintech businesses to keep an eye on that have adopted open and environmentally responsible business practices:

TreeCard

TreeCard focuses on customers in Europe. The business works to reduce plastic use and reforest the planet; its name says it all. They create cards using cherry wood that is responsibly harvested and a massive amount of recycled plastic bottles. Additionally, a specific reforestation initiative receives 80% of its profits. TreeCard recognizes the value of every customer's little effort. Together, they have a genuinely positive impact.

Starling Bank

Starling Bank provides 75% recycled material debit cards as of last week and is entirely branchless, paperless, and powered by renewable energy. Additionally, they offer clients the opportunity to participate in the Plant the Seed program.

As part of their referral program, the UK bank has collaborated with Trillion Trees, a nonprofit conservation group that works to stop deforestation and re-plant 1 trillion trees by 2050.

Trine

Trine is an excellent illustration of how green finance businesses use marketing and witty one-liners to simultaneously draw attention tor products and the green economy.

That is exactly what "For People, For Earth, For Profit" means. Trine finances solar energy initiatives using a peer-to-peer (P2P) business loan platform. The minimum contribution from an individual investor to the group is $25. There are currently more than 11,000 private donors who contribute.

Final Thoughts

Combating the impacts of climate change is the objective of green banks. We only have a short window of time to finish the transition to clean energy if we want to avoid the worst repercussions.

Strong yet affordable components, like green banks, can speed up the adoption of renewable energy, and therefore they must be made stakeholders of a comprehensive climate policy platform.