Fortino Capital switches ESG software provider to KEY ESG to improve submission-rate and data accuracy across the portfolio

About Fortino Capital

Fortino Capital is a leading B2B software venture capital and private equity firm with offices in Antwerp, Amsterdam and Munich. Fortino has 31 companies in its portfolio, ranging from start-up to scale-ups, based across northwestern Europe.

Fortino was looking to improve its data submission rate and accuracy to achieve its ESG goals

Fortino’s latest fund is Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) Article 9 and must therefore report on Principle Adverse Impact indicators (PAIs) according to SFDR. Alongside that, Fortino has additional D&I metrics which they choose to monitor for internal strategic reasons, such as board member diversity, diversity of the management team and employee net promoter score. In total, all portfolio companies of the four Fortino funds collect and report data on 33 metrics, with around 100 underlying data points.

The success of Fortino’s ESG strategy relies on their portfolio companies submitting a large amount of data. This is a particular challenge since many of the portfolio companies don’t have a dedicated ESG professional on the payroll. Fortino was aiming to reduce its portfolio’s carbon emissions – to this end they have a particular focus on data accuracy for their Scope 1 and 2 carbon accounting. Engaging and educating portfolio companies to deliver accurate carbon emission reporting became a significant drag on time and effort. Fortino therefore began searching for a software platform which could provide a simplified user-interface, and sufficient materials and support to streamline the process.

KEY ESG’s platform improves collaboration with portfolio companies

Fortino was already using an ESG software solution and had completed one year of reporting with that platform before moving to KEY ESG. Gilles Van Hulle, Legal Counsel at Fortino describes the reasoning behind this shift:

“Having completed our first ESG reporting campaign, we realised that the user-experience of the ESG software is of the utmost importance for maximised engagement with portfolio companies and high-quality output. KEY ESG is user-friendly and makes submitting data and ESG reporting easier for our portfolio companies.”

To find out what the outcome of Fortino's switch was, read the full case study HERE.