Tag Archives: SDGs

ESG/CSR, News

Zvilo Promotes a Sustainable Future and Commits to UN’s SDGs

Zvilo, the forward-financing and banking fintech, announces a set of ambitious environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets and strict reporting measures based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — a commitment part of its mission to become the first sustainable digital financial service provider in the Balkans and beyond.

Zvilo will directly contribute to nine (9) of the seventeen (17) SDGs*, as follows:

  • SDG 1: No Poverty. Zvilo seeks to provide accessible digital financial solutions enabling economic opportunities for low-income households and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Targets include disbursing over €1 billion in loans, financing approx. 25 million invoices through its supply chain finance program and reducing the number of unbanked people in the Balkans by a minimum of 100,000.
  • SDG 2: Zero Hunger. Zvilo will focus on supporting agricultural SMEs, ensuring that at least 20% of funding will be towards sustainable agriculture to increase resource efficiency through developing and upgrading the agro-business value chain.
  • SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being. Zvilo will support food security and safety by ensuring that at least 20% of funding goes towards ISO-certified SMEs.
  • SDG 5: Gender Equality. Zvilo will promote gender equality with a specific goal to support at least 20% of female-owned and managed enterprises.
  • SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy. Zvilo will seek to tackle climate change by supporting businesses that seek to adopt or are users of renewable energy and climate-smart technologies, providing at least 50% of funding towards these businesses.
  • SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. Zvilo will support the creation of over 70,000 jobs, increasing productivity and encouraging inclusive employment — successfully creating decent jobs in industry and industry-related services.
  • SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. Zvilo will contribute to the innovation of payment and financial systems and promote sustainable industrialisation, resulting in over 10,000 SMEs and 1 million individuals using digital wallets.
  • SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production. Zvilo will provide at least 20% of funding to support businesses in implementing more sustainable production methods, packaging, and waste management.
  • SDG 13: Climate Action. Zvilo will enable SMEs and individual users to track and offset their carbon footprint. As a company, Zvilo aims to be carbon neutral by 2026.

Admir Imami, Chairman of Zvilo, stated: “We are very proud to announce a set of stringent ESG standards to which Zvilo will operate. As a global citizen, ESG and responsible investing has been central to my business activity in the last two decades of my professional work. At Zvilo, as responsible lenders, we have a unique and influential position in the Balkan region. This means we must act responsibly by encouraging positive behaviour that helps achieve a fairer, more sustainable, and more equitable world and by supplying smaller businesses and consumers with the funds needed to enact these policies when cash flow is limited.”

The ESG commitments will have many positive impacts at a local level within the community and a broader level within the region. Some of these include:

  • Reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions for core business processes, properties, and infrastructure.
  • Inspiring a movement throughout the regional markets to embed ESG into its strategy and encourage companies to increase transparency and disclosure of their climate impact and move towards more sustainable business practices.
  • Supporting the energy transition towards renewable energy generation.
  • Promoting the 2X Challenge by empowering women throughout the value chain.
  • Promoting diversity and inclusion within the working environment.

“The responsibilities and aims we have, and our determination to meet them, do not end when we turn off our office lights or even help a business or consumers meet their green targets. We must ensure a continuous lifecycle of positive behaviour — through consistent and strict reporting to keep Zvilo, our clients and our customers educated and true to their responsibilities”, stated Njomza Qerimi, ESG Lead at Zvilo.

As a responsible lender, Zvilo promises to monitor and report ESG adherence accurately through tailored annual questionnaires. With Zvilo’s supply chain finance platform and the forthcoming web and mobile app, ESG data is automatically captured for reporting and portfolio management and enhanced using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Admir Imami concluded: “Businesses and consumers have a responsibility to make the world a better place. Although potentially once controversial in the business world, today, it is a fact: that businesses cannot and do not operate in a vacuum. This is true both ethically and as a matter of good business stewardship — as failing to live up to ESG standards can significantly impact brand standards and a business’s bottom line”.

“We aim to inspire other businesses to follow suit and give businesses access to the funding they need to make meaningful, structural changes to improve their adherence to environmental, social, and governmental norms”.

*Targets are projections and subject to change.

Climate, News

Shareholders more likely to support eco-initiatives if they have experienced climate disasters

Shareholders in locations recently hit by climate-related disasters such as hurricanes are far more likely to support environmental proposals, by as much as 38%, even when such proposals risk decreasing firm value, according to new research from the Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University (RSM).

The study, undertaken by Dr Guosong Xu at RSM alongside Dr Eliezer Fich at Drexel University, sought to bring greater understanding to two key questions at the crux of encouraging corporations to better support environmental protection efforts; whether shareholder beliefs about climate change alter their support for environmental proposals, and whether those proposals affect firm value.

Dr Xu says;

“Climate change related proposals have increased steadily in recent years, reflecting growing investor demand for corporate accountability. However, despite their popularity, these proposals commonly receive insufficient support. According to a report by the UN, just 2.8% received enough votes to pass during stockholder meetings held from 2006 to 2020.

“Our study seeks to better understand why these initiatives receive such little support, and what it takes to pass them successfully.”

The researchers speculate that such a lack of voting support is driven by stockholders’ perception that climate-change is not an immediate concern. Belief, they say, plays an important role in investor behaviour.

The researchers analysed mutual funds’ voting records of US firms according to the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) Voting Analytics database, between 2006 and 2020. They then mapped each funds headquarters to the Census 2010 county Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) code, to identify hurricane locations.

By doing this, the researchers were able to base their findings on more than 357,000 voting observations made by shareholders of US-based firms.

Dr Xu and Dr Fich made several key discoveries.

Firstly, funds in areas hit by a hurricane were significantly more likely to vote for an environmental proposal in the immediate aftermath of the event, as were funds located in other hurricane-prone locations. The difference in investor support was as much as 38% higher in such locations.

However, the effect was, for many, temporary, with most investors returning to their previous stances and reversing their support for such schemes within three years.

Notably, the researchers say that fund characteristics such as size, performance, flows, attitudes towards environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues had little impact on their research findings. Those instances where unconditional support was found for climate proposals did not differ among funds located either inside or outside of hurricane-prone locations in the years without a hurricane strike.

Therefore, shareholders’ changed perceptions about climate risks were the most likely reason for their increased support for pro-environmental initiatives after a hurricane strike.

Lastly, once climate-related proposals were passed, firm performance typically weakens. In analysing whether ESG-related proposals created value for firms, the researchers discovered that companies that approved environmental proposals also typically exhibited lower long-term stock returns and accounting underperformance.

The researchers say their work adds important information to the ongoing debate on the role of corporations in global environmental protection, by highlighting the role of investor psychology in altering shareholders’ perceptions about climate risks and, consequently, their support for corporate environmental policies.