Frankfurt The Schufa, best known for credit assessments of consumers, wants to set up a database for environmental risks of companies. Specifically, it is about a platform for EU taxonomy data. To this end, Schufa is entering into a strategic partnership with the Belgian financial start-up Greenomy.
With the new offer, Schufa enables banks and companies to meet the disclosure requirements of the EU taxonomy regulation for sustainability and to give them “a clear overview of the sustainability of their business”, says company boss Tanja Birkholz. The Schufa ESG Solution is intended to create a simple exchange of data between credit institutions, investors and companies and automatically calculate the required sustainability indicators.
The so-called EU taxonomy for sustainability, ESG for short, determines which loans can be classified as “green”. Accordingly, companies with activities that serve one of six sustainability goals of the EU are considered “green”. These include climate protection, adaptation to climate change and the protection of ecosystems.
The aim is to create more transparency on the sustainability of companies so that financiers, banks and investors, can also align their financing accordingly. One problem with implementation is that the necessary data is often missing.
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There are new reporting and transparency obligations not only for companies, but also for credit institutions. The Green Asset Ratio announced by the EU, for example, is intended to measure the proportion of sustainable financing in bank balance sheets. The money houses therefore need corresponding information from the companies.
Both sides feed in data
Among other things, information on the share of sustainable economic activities in sales and certain investment expenditures is requested. This is where Schufa wants to come into play with the central ESG database. Schufa ESG Solution is to be used to compare the bank’s financing and the company’s taxonomy figures. Therefore, both sides would feed in data.
Greenomy’s software is designed to help companies and banks collect and digitize the relevant ESG data. Schufa does not currently hold any shares in Greenomy. One investor is the securities processor Euroclear from Brussels.
>> Read more here: ECB criticizes: Banks underestimate climate risks significantly
Banks and companies pay if they use the new ESG database for their own reporting. No fee is due for companies if they enter their data there when requested by their bank, according to the credit agency.
The Schufa is majority owned by the savings banks and cooperative banks. So far, German banks have found it difficult to create common data platforms, for example to prevent money laundering. A central collection of important customer data would presumably reduce a lot of double work and thus costs.
If a consumer in Germany wants to take out a loan, buy a car or rent an apartment, banks, retailers or landlords usually do a credit check with the credit agency, which was founded in 1927 as the “protection group for general loan security”.
Savings banks and cooperative banks have recently slightly increased their shares so that they now together own 55 percent of Schufa. The background was that they wanted to prevent the Swedish financial investor EQT from acquiring a majority stake. According to financial circles, EQT is now in talks with Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, which together hold almost 19 percent of the Schufa shares.
More: Schufa registers an increase in negative reports