Finance&invest.brussels and Greenomy Launch the Impact Scoring Platform for the Belgian Ecosystem

Finance&invest.brussels (FIB) and Greenomy are launching the Impact Scoring Platform (ISP), an intelligent and automated sustainable investment analytical method that complies with European standards, without any administrative overhead. The digitisation of this unique system is made possible by the combination of FIB's impact investment experience and the technological innovation of the Belgian scale-up Greenomy. 

Composed of non-financial criteria, the new tool makes it possible to identify other risks and opportunities of a company, and to control them. It also improves the probability of successful investments. The use of the new platform is already attracting the interest of many financial players, including the Belgian federal public holding company SFPI, which recently chose Greenomy to implement its sustainability reporting.

Currently, many companies still focus too much on short-term financial performance, to the detriment of their long-term development and their ESG implications, i.e. environmental, social and societal. However, the European regulation strengthening sustainability requirements (CSRD) for companies and economic and financial actors will be applicable from 2024. The CSRD will require companies, primarily large companies, to report annually on their ESG performance indicators. A long and laborious administrative formality now simplified thanks to technology.

Download our white-paper “The Essentials of CSRD” for more information

As part of its recapitalisation in December 2020, Finance&invest.brussels has taken the lead in this area by developing a sustainable investment strategy called "Impact Scoring Platform” (ISP). Started in March 2022, the collaboration with Greenomy has allowed to refine and develop a digitalized sustainability scoring framework to assess ESG criteria of companies and potential investments, while ensuring fairness and transparency in the market. 

While this approach is becoming increasingly common in the financial sector, finance&invest.brussels is a forerunner in Belgium and on a European scale in developing a model that anticipates the requirements of European regulations in a way that is adapted to the realities of start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs.

In concrete terms, thanks to an intelligent segmentation, the ISP questionnaire was developed in collaboration with the Université Libre de Bruxelles and is tailored to each sector, based on existing standards and discussions with investment funds, insurers and other key players. It proposes a grid of criteria that is easy to understand and includes about a hundred questions, as opposed to the 1000 or so questions in traditional models. The company thus answers directly to questions related to its activity on the ESG and Impact aspects, which takes less than 60 minutes to a few hours depending on the case. 

The ISP thus complements Greenomy's standard investor offering, which already enables investment funds to assess the sustainability of their portfolios in accordance with the standards of the SFDR and the EU Taxonomy, with a solution focused on small companies.

Through this non-financial analysis framework, sustainability best practice is introduced to companies and enables them to become familiar with EU reporting requirements. 

By using the Greenomy solution, which already integrates all the regulatory ESG reporting standards established by the European Union (CSRD, EU Taxonomy, SFDR), finance&invest.brussels can assess and report on the sustainability of its investments in a standardised manner.

In doing so, the Brussels-based investor complements its financial analysis with non-financial criteria. This approach has already made it possible to carry out more than 150 financial analyses of companies seeking financing.

"The investor who invests "sustainably" does not forego profitability but simply adds one or more sustainability criteria generating a positive result on society and the environment. While we have always been attentive to the job creation potential of companies, we are now going one step further, with the ambition of favouring investments in projects that contribute to a more sustainable, resilient, socially inclusive and job-creating society in the Brussels Region", underlines Pierre Hermant, CEO of finance&invest.brussels 

Alexander Stevens, CEO of Greenomy, adds

“Greenomy is delighted to be able to help finance&invest.brussels and the entire Belgian financial ecosystem to make better investment decisions and to accelerate the environmental and solidarity transition. Greenomy's ESG infrastructure already allows many European companies and financial institutions to easily measure their ESG performance and produce their regulatory reports. Above all, this reporting allows them to understand how they can adapt their strategy for greater climate resilience and easier access to finance for their transition projects." 

Today, the expertise is being put at the service of the ecosystem as the ISP has been presented to several funds both public and private, as well as to several Brussels institutions. The SFPI, which is already working with Greenomy for its sustainability report, has already expressed its interest in the ISP and should follow suit very soon.

About Finance&invest.brussels

Finance&invest.brussels facilitates and completes the financing chain for value-creating companies in the Brussels Region. How? By providing concrete solutions to the financial needs of entrepreneurs, in the form of loans, equity investments or guarantees at key moments in the existence of their company: creation, development, innovation, internationalisation, environmental transition, takeover and transfer. 

Their goal is twofold. On one side, boosting the economy of the Brussels-Capital Region by taking into account the guidelines of its economic policy, in particular by pursuing the objective of economic transition towards socially and environmentally exemplary economic models. On the other hand, applying the rules of good industrial, financial and commercial management, as well as to obtain a market profitability that takes into account the investment risks.

About Greenomy

Greenomy is an ESG market infrastructure that provides SaaS solutions to companies, credit institutions and asset managers to comply with the new European regulation on sustainable finance (EU Taxonomy, SFDR, CSRD). By digitising the data capture and reporting process, the Greenomy solution establishes a global ecosystem of sustainability data and analysis that connects stakeholders and facilitates the redirection of funds to sustainable projects in line with the EU Green Deal. 

Greenomy is progressively integrating foreign green taxonomies to offer stakeholders a single solution for their global operations. Greenomy won the first prize for sustainability at the SIBOS conference organised by SWIFT in Amsterdam in 2022.

For media inquiries, please contact Annemarie McCurrach at annemarie@greenomy.io