Can green fintechs solve the polluting pension problem?
Fintechs have seen green, launching apps that help us track the carbon emissions of our shopping habits, play the stock market in a planet-friendly way and even fight plastic pollution with our debit cards.
These offerings are nudging consumers towards better behaviours, but there is one far bigger and far less sexy financial problem this crop of startups now wants to tackle. Pensions.
A new survey from YouGov and Money Matter found that 44% of people would switch over to a green pension if they could — and for fintechs that want to make money, pensions are a good place to be, with platform fees bringing in huge sums.
According to Cushon, the workplace savings startup that launched the world’s first net-zero pension in January, the average UK pension holder finances 23 tonnes of CO₂ emissions each year through the companies they invest in.
“Pensions are a sleeping giant,” the company’s founder, Ben Pollard says. “There’s literally trillions invested in pensions, lazily sitting there in tracker funds that perpetuate the status quo.”
Cushon, which has 87k customers and £300m assets under management, is one of a number of startups wanting to shift pensions in a sustainable direction. Founded in 2017, Danish fintech Matter also offers ‘sustainable’ workplace pensions, which it says avoid 50 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year.
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