Interview
Meeting with Riku Salminen, Director of Development of the Enento Group.
Within the Enento Group, of which UC is a part, part of the core business is to develop sustainable services. Thus, the current focus is on sustainability and ESG*. It should be noted that this trend is also notable in the rest of the banking and financial sector.
How does the Enento Group work proactively to ensure that we develop sustainable services in general?
The Enento Group is a pioneer in the development of sustainability information and services in the Nordic countries. The market demand for better sustainability data and value-added services is growing, as people and organizations are increasingly aware of climate change and its impact on our well-being and the future of our planet.
One of the drivers of this evolution is also new legislation, namely the European taxonomy, which is a classification system to determine whether a business activity is sustainable and to redirect capital flows to more sustainable activities.
What is a sustainable service for Enento?
When we talk about sustainable services, we often refer to the term ESG, which is a framework for assessing how sustainable and transparent an organization is in terms of environmental responsibility, social responsibility and corporate governance.
Can you give some examples of the services you are currently developing?
This is my favorite topic. During 2021, we started several development projects to create new ESG services at the Nordic and local level.
At the Nordic level, we are developing a brand new online service to collect ESG data directly from companies. Until now, the ESG report of Asiakastieto, which is also part of the Enento Group in Finland, was based on official information from public registers. With the collection of ESG data from companies, we want to enrich the ESG report with new sustainability information collected from the companies themselves to complete the picture of their social responsibility.
In Finland, we recently launched a new service called ESG Check, which uses a traffic light model to display a summary of a company's sustainability status: Positive / Nothing to Note / Negative. We are currently developing the next generation of our ESG report with an entirely new user interface and usability, , and we are implementing several new data points, such as ecolabels, net corporate impact, information security and GDPR compliance, contractor responsibility information, and sector-specific information on energy consumption and environmental taxes.
At UC in Sweden, we are developing our first ever ESG report on Swedish companies. The launch is scheduled for March 2022, so it's an exciting time.
Can you describe how the ESG report works?
The ESG report in Finland is available in our online store for all clients and via our online portal for our contract clients. Through our API, clients can also integrate ESG data directly into their systems and, through the tracking service, they can monitor changes in their client base in real time. Companies in the financial sector are among the biggest users of our ESG report. They use sustainability information as part of their decision-making processes, along with credit information, to select sustainable companies among their clients.
Do you plan to extend these services to the other Nordic countries?
Yes, that is our plan, as mentioned above, ESG reporting for Swedish companies will soon be launched at UC in Sweden. We are convinced that a sustainability offering represents a real Nordic growth opportunity for the Enento Group.
Why do you think there is an additional need for this type of service in the coming years?
Sustainability is everywhere, in newspapers, advertisements, product packaging, corporate websites, annual reports, etc. And there's 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 demanding transparent sustainability reporting from companies.
The amount of ESG data will explode in the coming years and we need to collect and leverage this data to improve decision making. It is now time to move from "talk the talk" to "walk the walk".
*The term ESG refers to environmental impacts, social responsibility and corporate governance.
