Finextra sat down with Kalliopi Chioti, chief marketing at ESG officer at Temenos, and Schuyler Weiss, CEO of Alpian at the Temenos Community Forum during May, where the experts discussed paths to sustainable growth for banks and emerging ESG solutions.
On the significance of ESG and sustainability, Weiss stated: “We need to expand the definition of wealth. You can have all the money in the world, but what does it matter if the world is falling apart? As a bank, as a company, when you see things going in a direction, you have to play your part in fixing it. There is lots to love about the world we live in, but we need to make sure we are moving in the right direction. As a bank, we have a tremendous ability and capability to help correct that course. We want our clients to be wealthy not just in their finances, but in all aspects of their lives.”
Chioti remarked that ESG and corporate social responsibility is a major global trend. While banks are looking for digital transformation, they will not pursue it at the expense of sustainability. This can be a difficult task, but Temenos possesses the ESG credentials and the open cloud platform to help our customers transform into smart and sustainable organisations.
Chioti added that Temenos Banking Cloud, which is powered by hyper-scalers like Microsoft Azure, aids their clients in monitoring and reducing the carbon footprint of their operations. The platform also enables banks to integrate third-party applications that can monitor, measure, and offset their customers’ transactions.
Chioti outlined the benefits Temenos clients gain from utilising their tools and software: “Through the Temenos Carbon Calculator which is on the Temenos Banking Cloud, we provide our customers with insights from the use of Temenos products, so they understand the energy consumption and emissions reductions, which helps with any reporting requirements and Net-Zero targets.”
Weiss explained that companies must manage their own sustainable impact, as well as the impact of their partners. On how Temenos and Alpian Bank are working together, he stated that the carbon footprint of their Software-as-a-Service version of Temenos core banking solution, is over 90% lower than what it would have been with another on-prem provider; a dramatic decrease in the footprint they would have expected as a bank.
“It’s one thing for someone to say they have a low carbon footprint, and it’s another thing for them to show it to you,” he commented.