Sustainable investments: FINGREEN AI helps companies with ESG reporting using artificial intelligence

Companies are increasingly required to act sustainably. In this context, the abbreviation stands for Environment (environmental protection), Social (social justice) and Governance (corporate management) – three areas of responsibility that are to be made sustainable. But when it comes to investments, this is not always easy, because not everything that looks green at first glance is. The startup FINGREEN AI supports decision makers with an artificial intelligence in ESG reporting. Founder Louis Frank tells us how this works and about a current pilot project with Plug & Play in an interview with Ambivation.

Louis, how did you get the idea to start FINGREEN AI?

Fingreen at first was a B2C company that wanted to offer sustainable investing options starting at a very low-ticket size. We then had a couple pivot to get to where we are today, but the idea was always to combine Fintech and sustainability. Then by listening to what people actually needed in the financial world, and what could be done with a very small team, this is how we got to the final idea of private markets ESG reporting and analytics.

On your website you are writing “We want to end greenwashing “. How could it happen that greenwashing is currently such a big problem in the investment sector?

On our website, it says that we want to end greenwashing not that we have succeeded. Greenwashing happens voluntarily but also involuntarily because most companies don’t have the resources or the time, the knowledge to fill accurately hundreds of ESG questionnaires. What we propose is an automated and transparent way of measuring impact, and aligning data to different frameworks that exist. This is not a perfect solution by far, for example, quantitative metrics are easier to get a clear-cut answer from than qualitative metrics but it is already a major starting point.

For our readers who are not yet familiar with the topic, could you briefly describe how your AI works and what added value it offers to decision makers?

We use different processes around AI and data sourcing in order to make the pain of collecting ESG data and reporting it as small as possible. We want to offer a tool that saves a lot of time for financial actors and ESG teams while guaranteeing preciseness and auditability.

The issue of trust is extremely important, especially for larger investments. How do you as a startup manage to get in touch with relevant decision-makers of well-known companies?  

I think the most important decision makers in our industry are regulators whether they’re financial regulators or national regulators. These are the ones ultimately setting the guidelines and this is who we follow. We do not have specific personal methodology; we make sure to comply with what internationally recognized regulators and scientists put out.

Are you currently cooperating with Plug & Play. How did you get to know each other? And can you tell us a bit more about how you support the company with investments? 

Yes, so Plug and Play is an investor in our start up and we are in the middle of a pilot project with them as well (venture capital funds are one of our preferred use cases) and our platform has been built at its core to evaluate ESG impact of private companies. We are super excited about working further with them and having them believe so much in our product and our team.

What challenges did you face on this project and how did you overcome them?

We faced many challenges just like any start up. I’d say, in our case, we created the company right when there was a collapse in startup funding. Additionally, the ESG industry was under tremendous criticism in relation to greenwashing scandals and black boxes methodologies. It’s quite hard to be a very tiny player in that field, but we know that we can bring something in terms of radical transparency and automation that is strongly needed right now.

Many companies are only now realizing how important sustainable investments are and that not all is green, which seems so at first glance. You have developed an innovative and exciting solution. But you are also a very young company. Why should they work with you in particular? 

I think the answer is in the question here, as you said we are young, but we have an innovative and new solution to offer to a problem which is brand new as well. This pain in ESG reporting will be solved in major part thanks to technology which will save a lot of time and avoid human mistakes or bad intentions.

Contact

Website: www.fingreen.ai

LinkedIn: Louis Frank