Multitude : Journey of a thousand miles – Embedding ESG at Multitude

Nontokozo Khumalo, our Group ESG Officer wrote this article. Nontokozo Khumalo is responsible for Multitude's ESG/Sustainability programme. Nontokozo has more than 10 years experience in financial services, including ESG and client management. We believe this is the right time to look at Multitude's efforts to integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG), considerations at Multitude as we approach the end of the year. The increasing awareness of ESG and its value among our stakeholders, suppliers, investors, colleagues, and stakeholders is inspiring and humbling. Multitude: A journey of 1,000 miles - Embedding ESG in Multitude. In 2021, Multitude took the first step towards integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG), considerations at Multitude. This is a step towards our goal to create the most valuable financial ecosystem. We believe this can only be achieved if we fully understand our risks, opportunities and impacts, which includes those related to ESG. We have reformulated our Group strategy to include an ESG agenda as part of the group mission. Our Growth Platform supports our three business units. We want to decentralize financial services by digitizing them, making them easy, fast, and green. Multitude began by defining ESG in the third quarter of last year. After extensive discussion with colleagues, including through workshops and a newly formed ESG Steering Committee (ESG Steering Committee), we published our first set ESG Goals for 2025. We then started telling our ESG story. Our main pillar is the Social pillar. The "S" in ESG stands for where we are most likely to make a significant impact, have the greatest risks to manage, and have the best opportunities to capture. We are a financial technology platform that offers products to different customer segments through three business units: SweepBank Ferratum and CapitalBox. Our goal is to provide finance and services to the most vulnerable customers. Our service and product offering by business units not only supports access, but also makes it easy to access the right customer. When defining our ESG strategy we focused on how we can expand access while being responsible. We already have Responsible Lending Principles that assist customer selection processes. Now we want to engage our customers about our practices. In Ferratum, one of our Business units piloted a Responsibility index. This survey asked customers how responsible their practices were. The Responsibility Index will be covered in more detail in the ESG Report 2022, which will also include SweepBank. We also assess customer and employee satisfaction using Net Promoter Scores. Both of these are essential to achieving our business goals. This is in line with our 2025 ESG goal to monitor, report on and improve stakeholder well-being. The year saw us implement a hybrid policy, which formalised our commitment to balance at the workplace and acknowledged the negative impact of long commutes on employee lives and the environment. The hybrid policy seeks to allow for collaboration between colleagues while allowing flexibility that is compatible with future working methods. Strong leadership commitment to ESG-conscious Growth Technology Platform. A major part of our ESG journey was to answer the question: How can we best embed ESG into our daily work? Multitude is constantly working to answer this question. Everyone has something to add to the discussion. We have begun to outline our commitments in areas such as human rights, diversity and inclusion, and we are now considering ESG for how we view risk and procurement. We have increased our Board engagement on ESG, incorporating our frameworks and goals into the governance agendas and charters of board committees. With strong support from the company's leadership, everyone should be thinking about ESG and taking responsibility. Don't forget the "E". We are committed to supporting the transition towards a low-carbon economy to achieve the Paris Agreement ambitions. Our digital platform, which offers cardless banking and paperless processes as well as access to data centers powered by renewable energy, already facilitates low-emission finance and banking access. We aim to monitor and report our carbon footprint, and set targets to reduce our negative environmental impact. We have been focusing our efforts on gathering quality data and closing the gaps. We expect to make progress in setting a baseline for our targets and sharing them with our stakeholders. The Group Environmental Policy, published in June of this year, outlines our plans for environment and outlines further progress in this area. Our journey to greatness. We would like to see ESG become an integral part of every day decisions made by colleagues around the world, and not just a traditional financial or strategic topic. We want ESG to be "democratized" and available to all Multitude employees. This is a quote from our group mission. As the Group ESG Officer, my role is to facilitate this access and support the cross-functional and unit ESG Steering Committee which includes our Group CEO as cochair. This includes supporting and initiating the many ESG conversations with colleagues around the globe and telling the ESG story about our Growth platform to both ourselves and to investors. ESG is an important topic for everyone in organisations today. Companies must demonstrate corporate citizenship and the stakes are high. It's therefore vital to increase interest in this topic. It's been inspiring to witness the rapid growth of ESG within our company. Some teams, business units and functions have taken ownership of how ESG can be integrated into their strategies and work. We will continue to increase awareness about this topic, its value, and how we can all be part of the support of EU and global-wide ambitions as well as meet the changing needs of our stakeholders. It is a rewarding journey that takes you on a thousand miles when you work with dedicated colleagues around the globe, who have different views and experiences. This blog was enjoyable. You can also read the other articles written by Nontokozo at Article1: Three ESG trends in FinTech Article2: How FinTechs can embed ESG Attachments Original link Original Document Permalink

Disclaimer Multitude SE published the content on 19/12/2022. It is solely responsible. Published by Multitude SE on December 19, 2022 at 16:44:08 UTC.