Fortino Capital

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.”

After a simple data migration exercise which KEY ESG was able to handle within a week, Fortino was able to start using the platform and begin the onboarding process with its portfolio companies. Gilles went on to explain that they were looking for a platform that fostered collaboration between Fortino and its portfolio companies on ESG:

“KEY ESG’s support team made the whole reporting process much smoother by taking-over the ‘chasing role’ to ensure timely completion of the reporting.”

The third aspect of the process that was improved with KEY ESG was the overall quality and accuracy of the data. Due to the close collaboration with the portfolio companies, the simple user-interface of KEY ESG’s Company Platform, and the additional support from our team of ESG experts, Fortino was able to record a 90% submission rate from its portfolio companies with a higher level of data accuracy.

Looking ahead from ESG reporting to improvement

Looking ahead, Fortino aims to improve its 90% data submission completion-rate and reach 100% by continuing to work closely with its portfolio companies via KEY ESG’s platform. Gilles explained that data accuracy will continue to be an important point of attention, particularly since Fortino is looking to reduce its portfolio’s carbon footprint ahead of the reduction trend that is taking place across the B2B software industry. Driving better ESG reporting processes across the portfolio will enable Fortino to identify opportunities for improved performance across the E, S and G metrics, including operational and governance improvements as well.