" class="no-js "lang="en-US"> Societe Generale and Altalurra Ventures invest in impak ratings
Friday, March 29, 2024

Societe Generale and Altalurra Ventures invest in impak ratings, a leading impact analysis and rating agency in Europe.

Societe Generale – one of Europe’s first financial services groups actively supporting its clients in their environmental and energy transition with responsible and innovative financing solutions – and Altalurra Ventures – a fund investing in technological start-ups with positive impacts – are investing €4.5 million in impak Ratings’ Series A round, with the ambition of making it Europe’s leading impact analysis and rating agency.

impak, a unique player on the market

Launched in 2019 and based in Montreal and Paris, impak Ratings aims to be the leading European impact analysis and rating agency. The start-up already has twenty clients that benefit from its innovative and unique methodology. The company provides financial institutions with high-quality impact analysis, based on the most consensual and rigorous industry standards, that bring transparency, comparability and data contextualization. By assessing how companies mitigate their negative impacts and how they generate positive ones, all through the lens of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, impak ratings goes beyond traditional ESG analysis and promotes a double materiality approach that consists in studying not only the ESG risks to a company’s business model, but also the impact of a company on its environment and society. This approach is now recognized as being instrumental in enabling the financial sector to be a catalyst for the transformation of our economies. This explains the company’s collaboration with major players in the market, such as Societe Generale.

In-depth collaborative work

Indeed, it is thanks to this forward-looking stance that the company was able to convince its new partners, whose participation will considerably accelerate the development of the start-up. In addition to its investment, the Societe Generale group, through its Global Banking and Advisory division, chose impak Ratings in December 2021 as its partner to provide impact analysis for all its major corporate clients and integrate the ratings into the bank’s standard business processes.

“We are pleased with the strengthening of this strategic partnership with impak Ratings. Having a good understanding of our clients’ environmental and social issues is essential in supporting them with their sustainability roadmap. By welcoming the start-up into Societe Generale Ventures, Societe Generale is contributing to accelerating the environmental and social transformation of its clients’ activities,” said Pierre Palmieri, Head of Global Banking and Advisory, Societe Generale.

Altalurra is also making a similar choice by signing a co-development agreement with impak Ratings, therefore adopting the best impact reporting practices for institutional investors in Europe and around the world.

Building momentum for sustainable finance

The financial sector is currently undergoing a deep transformation. As key players in the financing of the economy, banks and asset managers are increasingly taking up environmental and societal challenges to become strong enablers in this transition. To support these changes, they need to integrate high-quality data and impact analysis into their decision-making and business processes. The synergies that are emerging today between impak Ratings and its partners are fully in line with this approach, which aims to set coherent targets in the impact measurement process.

“This new collaboration with impak Ratings is an additional step in the credibility of our investment strategy with committed technology companies. It is indeed a pioneering player, able to co-develop and perfect impact assessment for any institutional investor. As such, we believe it is a start-up that has all the assets to quickly become the leading agency in its segment,” comments Lionel Auguste, co-founder of Altalurra Ventures.

“The announcement of our partnership with Societe Generale is significant and confirms impak’s positioning as a leading impact analysis and rating agency in Europe. It shows the acceleration of the financial sector’s transformation towards responsible and positive impact finance. This investment and the resulting partnerships clearly demonstrate the global leadership of these players in terms of sustainable finance,” concludes Paul Allard, co-founder and CEO of impak Ratings.

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