By 2030, Switzerland will become one of the world’s leading hubs for green digital finance, further impacting the environment and the economy.
Dedicated and talented entrepreneurs are needed, as are progressive and mission-driven companies and authorities that provide a secure and innovation-friendly framework.
From this point of view, Switzerland is on the right track.
At the 2023 Point Zero Forum (PZF) in Zurich, Switzerland announced the creation of a formal system. Green Fintech Network (GFN).
The 2024 PZF held in July provided the perfect platform to understand the current situation and strategize about the future and desired outcomes.
in singapore fintech festival In November 2024, stakeholders in Asia and the world will be able to learn more.
In its first year of existence, GFN has significantly expanded and diversified its membership, strengthened its structure, and started working on announced initiatives.
Switzerland currently boasts perhaps one of the most coherent ecosystems of green fintechs, affiliated financial institutions and academic partners in the world, with formal support from the national regulator, the government. SIF Secretary of State for International Finance.
It is therefore starting to become an important pillar to support the green transition and make Switzerland a leading place for sustainable finance.
The company is a key go-to partner for contacts, support and expertise on technology-assisted aspects of the sustainable finance sector.
GFN: Powerful Network
of green fintech network has grown from a small group of visionary sustainable finance leaders to a vibrant network of over 50 members in 2023.
Our core membership is comprised of startups of various stages focused primarily on data collection and data analysis, but also in the areas of technology-enabled retail and institutional support.
As such, GFN’s membership base also includes many major established domestic and international companies, including financial institutions and professional services firms (UBS, post financeand EY), Swiss Exchange SIX groupglobal data provider MSCI, and leading academic institutions (University of Zurich, Zauand IMD) Deliver cutting-edge research and build a pipeline of science-based spin-offs.
A complete overview of the GFN Member Directory can be found here. Important partnerships and collaborations were established throughout the year with major Swiss industry associations and networks. Swiss sustainable finance, Swiss Insurtech Hub, Sustainable Finance Geneva,and Swiss Banking Association SBA.
Internationally, the relationship with Singapore (MAS, gprnt.ai) are considered to be particularly valuable and collaboration with further financial centers is also being considered.
The way forward: Swiss regulations and open data, EU regulations, concrete business cases, maturing blockchain ecosystem
Regulatory developments in Switzerland: Regulators are focused on increasing the transparency and comparability of sustainability disclosures.
Although currently targeted only at large companies, mandatory reporting requirements will increasingly include larger companies.
Many small and medium-sized enterprises are already required to collect sustainability information due to the trickle-down effect of large companies across their supply chains.
Furthermore, the reporting framework is being developed beyond climate and will include nature and biodiversity as well as social aspects.
Switzerland aims to strengthen comparability through international platforms such as the Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU) and open data.
This is a great opportunity for green fintechs to build technology and data-enabled tools and solutions, as the focus is on making primary data widely accessible rather than locking it behind paywalls. This will be an opportunity.
For this reason, many Swiss green fintechs offer data-driven analytical solutions, benefiting from Switzerland’s world-leading academic institutions in fields such as data science and AI.
Compliance with EU regulations: Switzerland is heavily influenced by evolving EU regulations, as many Swiss companies are active in the EU market or are suppliers to large EU companies that require ESG data for their own reporting.
This means that the actual number of Swiss companies that have to collect and report sustainability data is much more than the 300 largest companies, perhaps ten times as large.
However, many of the affected Swiss SMEs do not have the necessary know-how at their disposal.
The scope for green fintechs to help small and medium-sized enterprises with their reporting operations going forward is vast.
Specific business case: As the overall direction of the economic transition becomes clearer, vast business opportunities will also emerge.
Disclosure and compliance have been early drivers of the need for green fintech solutions.
Renovating the technologies currently utilized by the building stock, industrial processes, agricultural economy, and related sectors requires huge investments.
New ways to capture relevant data, generate real-time insights, monitor, and ultimately raise funds are emerging, many of them strongly leveraging technology.
Therefore, some green fintech segments, whether organizational or individual, public or private, are reinventing the way we fund the transition, empowering and connecting impact and profit. I am.
Blockchain: Switzerland has already been a leader in the blockchain field for some time and is home to some of the most important blockchain infrastructure in the world.
While initially focused on and driven by cryptocurrencies, blockchain use cases have expanded significantly beyond attempts to reinvent money, particularly its utility in distributed ledger technology. and applications focused on infrastructure value. One important example is the tokenization of real-world assets.
Going forward, traditional financial institutions will leverage DLT at the intersection of greening the financial system.
Immutable raw data is authenticated and recorded on the blockchain, making it auditable and comparable with appropriate meta-information.
This is particularly important for carbon markets, but also for emerging nature and biodiversity markets, to improve trust and transparency and reduce trading, monitoring and compliance costs.
The Swiss Pavilion international pavilion At the upcoming Singapore FinTech Festival.
