Will Cop26 be the catalyst for financial institutions to apply digitisation strategies to back-office operations? 

Pressure is mounting on financial organisations to quickly improve their efforts in the fight against climate change. A statement from the UN’s annual climate change conference (Cop26) says every company, financial firm and bank must change to meet climate goalsⁱ. It adds that every financial decision has to take the environment into account.

Consumers and regulators are increasingly looking for organisations to reduce their social and environmental footprints. In Deloitte’s recent Better Banking Survey, 70 percent of customers said they would be more likely to choose a bank that had a positive social and environmental impact. And the Bank of England has already aligned its monetary policy toolkit with the government’s net zero target.

Ahead of Cop26, global debt management company Hoist Finance has set an example of how to streamline efficiencies to reduce dependency on resources. Using FICO^® Platform, Hoist has unified decisioning across all regions, delivering a dramatic improvement in business efficiency and customer experience, leveraging all available data sources and the latest in AI innovation.

Before working with FICO, Hoist managed customers by using 14 different systems. The shift to FICO’s single decisioning platform enables Hoist to save 442 tons of carbon for each 10% of customers using the automated process. This reduces the organisation’s carbon footprint for every digital resolution by 97%. In the UK, Hoist can now complete 33% of debt resolution cases digitally.

“FICO’s technology puts us in a position to streamline operations and standardise our approach, whilst maintaining best-in-class standards for the borrower experience,” said Fabian Zwanzig, head of operations for Germany at Hoist Finance.

“As an environmentally focused organisation supporting the UN’s sustainable development goals, Hoist was keen to add to its operational and efficiency savings by moving to a unified platform,” added Steve Hadaway, vice president and general manager for EMEA at FICO. “By taking this step towards a more sustainable way of working, Hoist can stay ahead of potential environmental regulation and shouldn’t need wholescale changes as new rules are implemented. We are proud to help it achieve its environmental goals and expect many other financial service providers to follow Hoist’s lead.”

For its achievements, Hoist Finance and FICO won the Best Use of Technology category in the Credit Excellence Awards 2021.