Dydon launches software solution for sustainable finance

Since incorporation, Zurich based startup Dydon has been developing a flexible AI platform that simplifies the usage of artificial intelligence for business experts in the financial, legal and healthcare industries. Thanks to its growing user base, the 2016 founded company with ten employees reached its break-even point last year after hitting the CHF 1 million mark, as revealed by founder and CEO Hans-Peter Güllich.

Since 2020, Dydon and its partners, Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands, VÖB (Association of German Public Banks) and its subsidiary VÖB-Service GmbH launched a project to develop the TAXO TOOL. The application maps the complexity of the technical evaluation criteria of the EU Taxonomy for Sustainability in one system. It also allows evaluating economic activities as environmentally sustainable to implement the EU Taxonomy for sustainable investments. Thanks to this application, financing projects or financial products can be analyzed and assessed for conformity with the EU taxonomy.

The tool primarily targets banks and savings banks as customers. However, it is also open to all institutions interested in a market standard for implementing the taxonomy and which fall within the scope of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 June 2020 on establishing a framework to facilitate sustainable investment.

The tool is now live with a group of bank institutions from the DACH region that participated in the pilot becoming customers. The startup has already onboarded five companies with more in the pipeline. According to Güllich, there is a high demand from players in the financial sector to use the platform because it is the only solution in the market for the green fintech industry, as also demonstrated in the Deloitte report.

“We intend to revolutionize the sustainable finance assessments, combining transparency, auditability, and efficiency with our unique sustainable finance knowledge base”, says Güllich.

Stefan Hirschmann, Member of the Management Board at VÖB-Service GmbH, added: “The fundamental challenge of the EU Taxonomy is the great complexity as well as the huge scope of the technical assessment standards, the procedure for checking a criterion and the required data input. With the Taxo Tool, we now offer a tailor-made instrument with which the institutions can reduce costs and automate processes to a considerable extent.”

About VÖB
VÖB is a leading industry association in the German banking industry representing 59 member institutions, including the regional banks (Landesbanken) and the promotional banks owned by the federal and state governments. The VÖB represents the joint business and general interests of its members in all matters relating to banking policy promotes cooperation between member banks and supports them in fulfilling their missions.

(Press release/RAN)