How lenders deliver sustainable impact cost-effectively and create billions of value for their real estate clients
One tool which increases the value of your real estate, identifies commercial (lending) opportunities, reduces energy consumption and carbon emissions, and helps with regulatory compliance & risk. Millions of building owners, investors and occupiers benefit already because their lenders offer the Green Buildings Tool to create joint impact. This article reveals why this is important and how this is possible.
The global sustainability transition
It is remarkable how tenants, landlords, and financial institutions are in need to adapt their investment strategies to stay in line with sustainable developments. The upcoming focus is not only mandatory but also brings great benefits, such as increased value, lower risks, higher occupancy rates, lower maintenance costs, and a sustainable image.
Especially financial institutions are increasingly looking to finance sustainable lines of business. 40% of all carbon emissions come from the built environment, and almost all banks in the world finance real estate, sometimes for more than 60% of their balance sheet. There is a great beneficial impact to be made by the front runners of this industry by engaging in ESG initiatives. However, the actual progress is limited due to complexities, missing data and misperceptions.
Challenges in sustainability compliance and reporting
A lot still remains unclear on how to comply with all sustainable requirements, gather the necessary data, and involve all the relevant internal stakeholders, tenants and clients. At the same time, banks and building owners do not always know how to save carbon, or even what the current emissions are per building.
This results in a need to gather data and decide on the next steps by producing quick, scalable and affordable carbon reports of real estate portfolios followed by sustainability business cases for the entire portfolio or per building or house.
Delivering impact at scale for the banks and their clients
CFP Green Buildings has developed a platform that provides simple, large-scale and specific levels of insight. Entire portfolios, as well as individual objects, can be processed. The platform gives instant insights into portfolio performance. It recognises the type of property, retrieves the sustainability score, identifies the most relevant sustainability measures and establishes a business case, cost-effectively, completely automatically on the basis of algorithms and APIs. The enrichment of data by owners and banks creates a self-managing system of sustainability and enables them to take action. It offers a great way to smartly decarbonise your real estate or loan book.
HSBC: ‘’The Tool is user-friendly and easy to understand. The support received from the CFP team during implementation and heading into our planned partnership had been outstanding. We are looking forward to starting our partnership and engaging with our clients to drive the transition conversations.‘’
The value created for millions of buildings with several major banks
The Tool has been deployed with international banks like Lloyds, HSBC, ING, and others. It helps the bank’s clients to obtain the insights they need to make their real estate/homes more sustainable. Banks find value in identifying lending opportunities, better client engagement, data for risk management, green bonds and reduced scope 3 carbon emissions. Currently, over 1.5 million properties are processed annually.
ING: ‘’Very clear overview, the Tool is easy to work with.’’
The proven impact of the Green Buildings Tool
ING Bank has academically researched and published the impact of its sustainability practice. In the first five years of deploying the Green Buildings Tool alongside other initiatives, the number of green assets grew from 15% to 90%. More properties were certified by offering clients insight through the platform, and more sustainability measures were taken. This has increased the entire portfolio’s value and saved hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2, providing the bank and clients with financial benefits, risk reduction, and reporting opportunities. Elements that brought these results were the connection to other banking products, like green loans, and the integration into relationship managers’ Toolkits and targets.
Lloyds Banking Group: ‘’The CFP Green Buildings product provides insights enabling our clients of all segments to achieve improved energy efficiency and cost savings and help them with the transition to low carbon economy, all in a very intuitive and user-friendly way. The software is a white label and had been LBG branded. Partnering with CFP has been a delight, they are 100% professional, hardworking, and a pleasure to deal with!‘’
Reach out for a demo
The beauty of the Green Buildings Tool is that it is applicable from the biggest financial institutions or portfolio holders to SMEs or even individual homeowners. It creates value for your business and helps with sustainability compliance and reporting.
If you want to know how to create value for your business and become (or remain) an industry leader in sustainability, feel free to reach out for a demo of the Tool.
