Money20/20: Bringing transition finance to life with data

The session explored global banking trends in addressing climate change and showcased SAP Fioneer’s ESG platform, rooted in ESG data, to transform its transition financing efforts

As the climate crisis threat looms ever larger, the McKinsey Global Institute is counting the financial cost of the net-zero transition.

Its report estimates that the net-zero transition will require a staggering $275t in spending between 2021 and 2050, averaging $9.2t per year.

Banks and financial institutions are crucial funding this transition.

To succeed, they must embrace transparency, ESG and innovative data approaches to guide their financing activities, according to a panel at Money20/20 Europe this week.

The session, Sustainable Finance: Bringing Transition Finance to Life with Data, hosted by Matthias Lange, partner at McKinsey, and Maria Patschke, chief executive officer at SAP Fioneer ESG Solutions, explored global banking trends in addressing climate change and showcased SAP Fioneer’s ESG platform, rooted in ESG data, to transform its transition financing efforts.

Lange said: “Banks have a global revenue pool of hundreds of billions of dollars to fight climate change.”

He also noted that we are seeing opportunities for green banking products and initiatives, and opportunities to build green banks.

Moreover, organisations need to adopt a holistic approach, and data and technology should be the foundation for transformation.

Patschke continued: “Companies should be disclosing their carbon footprint.”

And said: “We need to work with other data sources—banks internal data, customer specific data and ESG data.

“Companies need to know their CO2 data in order to make strategic decisions and make sure they are not green washing.”

For companies that can’t track the data themselves, they can outsource to other companies, such as with SAP Fioneer’s platform.

Patschke said: “The ESG dashboard provides everything you need to know about your performance at your fingertips. And it provides transparency which is necessary for decision making.”

Sign up to our weekly newsletter and receive our daily email round-up of all the biggest news from Money20/20 Europe: http://eepurl.com/dmQRgH

Image: Canva

Josh Poyser Josh Poyser is an editor at FinTech Intel. He has written about fintech for several years and appeared at FinTech Connect 2023 on the 'Unlocking Success: The Art of Fintech PR' panel.