Why did we move into sustainable finance ?
Since Onbrane creation, we have been building the platform with our ecosystem. Our focus has always been to meet customers’ needs and challenges. When it comes to sustainable finance, the market demands: transparency, simplicity and efficiency.
The integration pace of European and French market players on the Onbrane platform is increasing rapidly. Many clients and prospects have told us they want to issue and invest in sustainable financial instruments, such as green, social, sustainable debt. The Onbrane platform is actually live for Commercial Paper and medium term notes.
We believe that the future of financing must be sustainable. It is time to align investments with more than just profitability. Through our platform, we want to support players in building a more sustainable economy.
The benefits of issuing sustainable Commercial Paper
Commercial Paper is a short-term debt product that offers highly liquid investments with greater risk diversification. Investors perceive CP as a valuable product to make a financial trade-off across their entire yield curve. Moreover, its price is more flexible than that of other debt products.
Like all debt products, Commercial Paper is eligible for sustainable projects and assets. In other words, CP is just another way of raising funds to finance a set of operating expenses and projects.
By issuing a sustainable Commercial Paper, issuers would tell buyers that their funds will be allocated to projects with positive environmental and social impacts. On the other side, banks and investors would profit by aligning their portfolios with ESG factors.
Some examples of sustainable Commercial Paper
We have already seen major issuers who made this short-term financial trade-off.
- Vasakronan AB has issued the world’s first Green Commercial paper in 2018.
- Rabobank issued ESG-related CP by ranking in the top 5% of its industry peers.
- ENEL issued the first sustainability-linked ECP in 2020 with sustainability KPIs.
- IDB Invest issued a US$ 3billion sustainable Euro Commercial Paper to finance and refinance eligible sustainable projects
On the market, players are making commitments to sustainability. Most of them have expressed an acute need to adopt sustainable standards, instruments and best practices. Our users and prospects confirm this trend and it has been accelerated with the COVID 19 pandemic.
What ties have we made with the sustainable community?
Green bonds were mainly issued by large supranational issuers, such as the EIB and the World Bank, followed by large private issuers. The green bond market reached over $1 trillion in issuance in October 2020.
We first met with leading sustainable issuers in Europe, such as the EIB, SNCF, Vasakronan, ENGIE, AFD, Eurofima and more to understand their needs and collect their feedback.
We have also engaged in discussions with active banks in these markets, such as Rabobank, SG, BNP, CACIB, etc; As well as sustainability experts, such as third party reviewers and market associations, namely ICMA, CBI and ACT initiative.
The goal was to identify some of the most pressing inefficiencies that our sustainable module will address in the market. We have confirmed our solution and features with institutional investors and market regulators, such as the Banque de France.
Our sustainable module
Onbrane’s mission is to bring simplicity and efficiency to all debt capital markets. Sustainable finance is one of them. We are building the first sustainable OTC platform to issue and invest in sustainable debts with the best market practices and standards.
We simplify sustainable debt negotiation, issuance and reporting processes. Our module enables issuers to manage their framework and connect their financing debt instruments with sustainable projects and assets directly on the Onbrane platform.
We want to be a golden source of Truth for reporting processes. We provide a module to automate the production of impact reporting and allocation tracking. We also offer great connectivity and visibility to all stakeholders inside and outside the Onbrane platform.
Finally, we streamline the workflow collaboration for all market players to work actively in one place. Issuers would easily share documents and data with banks, investors, SPO providers, and all other stakeholders. Inversely, investors and banks would comment, ask questions and validate all information.
Want to find out more about our Sustainable module ?
