UBI Banca brought together the main players from the financial, industrial and academic worlds in Milan for the event “Sustainable finance and fintech: progress and innovation”. The purpose of the appointment, organized by the bank in collaboration with Fintastico, the portal dedicated to information on what's new in the fintech galaxy, was to create an opportunity for discussion and reflection on the role that fintech is taking on within the processes linked to sustainable growth.
The various speeches, supported not only by UBI Banca representatives but also by personalities from the Fintech & Insurtech Observatory of the Milan Polytechnic, IBM, Luxottica, Grifal, Banor SIM, ESGeo, Eurizon, InVento Lab and MDOTM, highlighted some of the key topics useful to achieve responsible growth. During the event, in fact, the broad scenario linked to sustainable investments was explored, from the regulatory environment at European level to the influence exerted by the behavior of institutional investors and the various actions that companies must undertake to manage the environmental, social and governance risks better.
“Sustainability and innovation – he commented Rossella Leidi, Chief Wealth & Welfare Officer and Deputy General Manager of UBI Banca – are the pillars on which growth is increasingly based. A rapid transformation process is underway in which companies and banks are reviewing business models and organizational processes to direct them towards sustainable development, in the broadest sense of the creation of economic value over time combined with social value and the reduction of environmental risks . In a context of evolution of this magnitude, it seems essential to identify relevant technological trends. The contamination between players with consolidated know-how and new players can generate completely new business models even in more traditional industries, bringing direct value to the socio-economic fabric".
The event underlined the need to come into ever greater contact with the Fintech ecosystem, taking an approach Open Innovation which provides for a collaborative and open method for managing innovation, not only aimed at the realization of collaborative relationships linked to the provision of services, but at the development and consolidation of direct contacts with the system to feed the process of internal generation of innovative initiatives . This is why UBI Banca is a partner of the Fintech Innovation Lab in London, an incubator for start-ups in the financial sector, and it is always with a view to cooperation and collective growth that a partnership was launched last year with Plug & Play , the first international startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley.
UBI Banca's commitment to sustainable finance started in 2012: since then the Lombard bank has issued 96 Social Bonds for a total value exceeding one billion euros. During 2019, the bank successfully placed the first Green Bond issue dedicated to institutional investors with orders for approximately 1,5 billion euro. Finally, this year, for the first time, UBI Banca is among the 325 companies included by Bloomberg in the 2020 Gender-Equality Index (GEI).
