Inetum and Crédit Agricole CIB challenged HEC students on Sustainable Finance

Inetum and Crédit Agricole CIB challenged HEC students on Sustainable Finance

Inetum and Crédit Agricole CIB challenged HEC students on Sustainable Finance

Hackathon ESG - Inetum & CACIB

Career

Creation date : Wed, 02/01/2023 - 10:18

On January 10, 2023, Inetum's Consulting Financial Services division, in collaboration with Crédit Agricole CIB, organised a hackathon on sustainable finance with HEC Junior Conseil students at the Village by CA in Paris.

Supported by Finance Innovation and start-ups, the students' objective was to think about how banks could promote the transition to a sustainable economy. To do so, they had to work on a use case throughout the day and propose new sustainable products and services based on the bank's ecosystem to a jury - called the "Executive Committee" for the occasion.

A look back at a day full of learning for both the students and the experts present.

The day began with an introduction by Guillaume Bossé, Group VP - Global Head of Financial Services Consulting at Inetum, and Romaric Rollet, Head of Innovation and Digital Transformation at Crédit Agricole CIB, who presented the outlines and challenges of the day, as well as the many partners of the event: Finance Innovation and four start-ups that will participate in the hackathon alongside the students: Aktio, Kemmrod, Ethifinance and Iceberg Data Lab.

"We are very happy to participate in this type of event because we need to identify new ideas, identify future talents and show that these talents are the ones who will build the finance of tomorrow", says Nicolas Ferreira, Deputy Director General of Finance Innovation.

Each team was made up of three HEC students, a start-up and a coach from Inetum's Consulting division and Crédit Agricole CIB employees. Each team had to reflect on a use case to be chosen among five themes: biodiversity, sustainable mobility, climate risks, the value chain and carbon footprint.

Three workshops to refine the topic

Throughout the day, the teams, with the help of their coach, had three workshops to identify the service they were going to propose, work on their business model and prepare their final 5-minute presentation. The participants had two jokers at their disposal to guide their solution and their ESG use-case: a call to a start-up, to get advice on the right way forward, and an input from a member of the Executive Committee on the choice between several products or solutions that the participants wanted to present.

These workshops aimed to develop a number of skills in consulting, business approach and sustainable finance: strategic thinking, creativity, working in agile and collaborative mode, oral fluency and increased competence in ESG & Finance topics...

Each team was judged on specific evaluation criteria: quality of content, credibility of the final pitch, compliance with instructions, understanding and analysis of the issue, approach and consideration of feedback. The winning team will be offered an internship at CACIB.

"This day is a great example of collective intelligence, with students from the HEC business school, CACIB and Inetum employees, start-ups and business advisors... We got some very interesting results and use cases that I think we will discuss again later," says Guillaume Bossé.

Interesting projects, quite implementable

At the end of each workshop, the students had a few minutes to present their work and receive feedback from the audience. The projects were gradually refined into real banking services, which are fully applicable in real life.

  • The "Biodiversity" team proposed an advisory service to improve the environmental performance of the bank's customers regarding biodiversity, with a Biodiscore, a function which, like the nutriscore, would give a rating on "biodiversity" with coloured labels.

  • The "value chain" team proposed the Trust for Impact solution, which involves setting up a customer-oriented marketplace based on the Airbnb model: "Greater transparency for greater trust", explained one of the participants.

  • The "carbon footprint" team proposed the Decarbonatis solution to reduce the carbon footprint of the bank's customers. This solution involves a decarbonisation loan offer and customer support.

  • The "Sustainable mobility" team considered how the bank could help sustainable mobility and proposed a more sustainable and greener transport service for society, with the creation of an ecosystem of partners and investment vehicles specialising in sustainable mobility.

  • The climate risk team worked on turning risk into business opportunity. To this end, it has created an offer to assist companies in analysing the risks of their financing plan and securing their assets.

At the end of the day, the Executive Committee and the public present voted, each on their own, to elect the best project. In the end, the sustainable mobility team won both prizes: the jury prize and the public's favourite prize.

"I was really impressed by the professionalism and maturity of the students. Their ideas and the quality of their pitch convinced me to invite the five student teams to come and pitch again at Crédit Agricole CIB," explains Romaric Rollet.

It was a great event, which everyone praised for its organisation and which showed what synergies could bring to sustainable finance. "This type of event bringing together all these expertises will become increasingly important, since we are convinced that the transformation linked to sustainable finance will be as important as the digital transition that companies have undergone in recent years," concludes Guillaume Bossé.

Congratulations to all the participants and thanks to Inetum, Crédit Agricole SA, FNCA and CACIB for the organisation, as well as to the partners, Finance Innovation and HEC Junior Conseil and the start-ups, Aktio, Kemmrod, Ethifinance and Iceberg Data Lab for their precious help.

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