Partnerships can help accelerate the green transition of society. Consequently, Danske Bank is aspiring to harness the value of collaboration to give customers the ability to act and create sustainable progress today and for generations to come.
The world is facing an existential challenge in fighting climate change. Financial institutions play a central role in supporting the transition towards a more sustainable society. Danske Bank has made a clear commitment to be a leading bank in the Nordic region within sustainability and sustainable finance and has a fundamental responsibility to support a shift in capital deployment to enable the transition to a sustainable society and to support their customers in their transition journeys.
Financial institutions alone cannot achieve the transition. It needs to happen in close collaboration with stakeholders and customers, who will need to build transition plans and change behaviour according to scientifically guided scenarios.
“We are determined to make long-term sustainable change, but we cannot do it alone. Therefore, we are constantly on the lookout for partnerships”
Kasper Uhd Jepsen, Senior Vice President,
Tribe Lead, Daily Corporate and Transaction Banking
To support customers in the transition, Danske Bank aspires to build an ecosystem of products that makes it easier for the customers to act and drive responsible businesses and behaviours. According to Kasper Uhd Jepsen who leads development within Daily Corporate and Transaction Banking, the ability to address ESG issues will be an important criterion for how customers assess banks in the years to come.
“Our ability to address the pressing issues and make it easy for customers to transit to a greener economy will have ramifications for how they will judge us. Understanding this will give us a leading advantage to build on in the future.”
Partnerships can support the ambitions
As a financial institution, Danske Bank has several touchpoints with all of its customers, and they have insights into a broad spectrum of their customers’ activities. Playing an integrator role and activating these insights may help to speed up the transition and impact.
“We are determined to make long-term sustainable change, but we cannot do it alone. Therefore, we are constantly on the lookout for partnerships. When we team up with stakeholders in our value chain, we can bridge our ambition to make customers choose the responsible option. And most likely, no customers want ten individual solutions delivered from 10 different fintechs, so we aim to deliver all data and insights in a digital savvy experience,” says Kasper Uhd Jepsen.
Competition in financial services will shift from offering individual banking products to shared marketplaces with excellent services that address customers’ needs. This new way of banking paves the way for exciting new business partnerships as, for example, big financial moments like buying a home involve many complexities beyond financing.
On the business side, ecosystems are emerging in close connection to ERP systems, which is typically the most common interface used by business customers. Danske Bank District solution integrates with ERPs and Partners and is the first step toward more open banking solutions and integrated ecosystems.
Customer centric solutions
If financial services want to cater to the customer’s needs, they must design services centered around the customers. Building an ecosystem creates a marketplace of services from which customers can choose, between loans, mortgages, and investment opportunities.
“We ultimately want to help our customers to understand that the choices they make matter and how they can take action to support the green transition” says Kasper Uhd Jepsen expressing his goals for the bank’s focus on the agenda:
“Together with partners, we aspire to create solutions to analyse and report on your carbon footprint and suggest ways to reduce emissions through greener spending choices, habits and climate-friendly financial goals. Danske Bank have strong sustainability advisory today, and like everything else, it also needs to be digital and fintechs can play a key role here.”
For us to be successful in the combat against the profound challenges of climate change, strong collaboration across both financial institutions, fintechs, customers and politicians will be needed.
