Sage, the accounting, monetary, HR, and payroll know-how supplier for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), has launched a brand new Carbon Measurement API designed to empower banks with the instruments they should help their SME clients on the trail to internet zero.
With banks all over the world going through extra stress from the general public, governments, and regulators to decrease their carbon emissions, Sage is aiming to assist them improve their inexperienced lending practices. By offering an SME-friendly carbon accounting software that integrates seamlessly into their current platforms, Sage is hoping to make a big influence in supporting internet zero objectives throughout the globe.
“Sage is on a mission to help companies on their journey to sustainability,” defined George Sandilands, VP of carbon accounting at Sage. “By fostering a extra sustainable enterprise setting and providing tailor-made inexperienced finance merchandise to their clients, banks can now higher serve their SME clients by providing the instruments wanted for correct carbon reporting, thus driving a greener economic system, and in flip, decreasing their financed emissions.”
For the reason that launch of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) framework in 2019, banks and monetary establishments have discovered it laborious to trace the emissions linked to the companies they fund as a result of they don’t have sufficient direct information from SMEs. Alternatively, SMEs usually have a troublesome time reporting their very own emissions as a result of they lack the instruments and assets wanted to measure their carbon footprint.
Sage’s Carbon Measurement API appears to be like to unravel these issues by enabling banks to fulfill PCAF requirements, which supply a transparent technique to measure and report the greenhouse gasoline emissions linked to their loans and investments. The brand new Sage software helps banks enhance the standard of their information, transferring from much less detailed info (PCAF 5) to extra correct, direct information (PCAF 2).
Automating information assortment processes
Sage’s new answer simplifies the method for SMEs, making it straightforward for them to grasp and report their carbon emissions. SMEs can additional refine the accuracy of their carbon footprint by connecting to their accounting software program, and leveraging superior AI and machine studying (ML) applied sciences to automate information assortment and evaluation. All of this could then be simply reported to banks assessing SME clients’ emissions profiles in the course of the lending course of.
Darren Pirie, local weather propositions lead at NatWest, defined: “We have to present carbon accounting and decarbonisation providers to our 19 million enterprise clients within the UK. By partnering with Sage, we’re enabling companies throughout the UK to embrace sustainable practices with confidence.”