Triodos Investment Management saves 2,200 hours annually through Bipsync

The bank provides direct investments for clients, focusing on micro-finance, emerging markets as well as renewable energy, social, and agricultural projects. The fund management of its equities and bonds department was previously outsourced to an insurance company. Subsequently, the fund management and company research were brought in-house to allow for more control over investments and related processes. Triodos also wanted to ensure that the selected investments reflected the vision and values of its organization.

The bank’s client base is primarily made up of retail investors, distributors, NGOs, government agencies, foundations, and non-profit organizations. As sustainable investing has grown in popularity, Triodos’s client base has expanded to include more traditional private banking clients such as family businesses, high-net-worth individuals, and entrepreneurs. To date,
Triodos has nearly four billion euros invested in its platform.

Henk Jonker is the head of Triodos’ company research team. “Our research team supports the fund managers on the equity and bond sides to generate investment ideas. We also make sure that our investments in the funds remain compliant with our ESG criteria,” shares Henk.

The Opportunity

Triodos drives unique investment process with Bipsync

Four years ago, the Triodos team found themselves at an impasse. Their current ESG research documentation system was outdated, but the team was also redesigning their entire investment process. They decided to prioritize the development of the process to find a purpose-fit solution for their needs. After developing the process, Triodos began to search for a research management system that could handle all the steps in a process in a structured, organized way.

Henk and his team looked for the following requirements during their search:

• Centralized location to capture the entire research process
• Ability to communicate with external data providers
• Reporting functions and automation of related processes
• Accessibility on the go

During their search, Triodos met with a consultant to provide a shortlist of software providers that meet their requirements. As Henk puts it, “Nothing serious came back. There are a lot of workflow systems and documentation systems, but nothing specific for the investment process. At the later stages, a prominent global data provider and Bipsync were the two main contenders. The other provider had some advantages, but Bipsync was the only one that could capture our whole process.” Henk also appreciated that the founder of Bipsync came from an investment analyst background and was able to “speak the same language.”

The Solution

Triodos embeds Bipsync into internal processes, audits, and reviews

At Triodos, the core users of Bipsync are research analysts and fund managers. The research analysts conduct their research within Bipsync; the fund managers can then access and review the research on the platform. The front office support team also uses Bipsync for administrative purposes when purchasing securities.

Henk highlights how quickly the platform has integrated into Triodos’s various departments, “There’s increasingly a wider group of people and departments using Bipsync as a source of information.”

For example, the research management team builds reports through Bipsync for product management, funds reporting, as well as internal and external audits. The platform is also essential for capturing information used in annual audits to meet sustainability investments requirements in 12 countries.

As part of Triodos’s internal audit, Bipsync manages the creation of documents by analysts, reviews by vendors, and the approval process. The platform’s ability to work with external data providers was critical as well. Triodos uses external and internal documentation and data as part of its research process. With Bipsync, Triodos can integrate external data from ESG providers right into their own research process.

The Results

Bipsync far exceeds breakeven point of Triodos’ investment

One of the unique aspects of Triodos’s investment management strategy is that the team closely monitors every investment they make. They are in close contact with the companies they choose to invest in and use Bipsync to record meetings in a structured way.

Triodos uses a sustainability alert system to monitor for emerging threats and opportunities. “If something happens with a company, we receive an alert, can review it, and form our opinion on the matter. Previously, we didn’t have a structured way of doing that. Being able to record all these steps in Bipsync is a real plus.

We’ve already seen that our clients are very satisfied with this method when we send them reports of all the alerts we cover,” explains Henk. The marketing and account management departments lean on these alerts and documentation in Bipsync to share with clients how Triodos is performing due diligence around sustainability issues.

The easy implementation process allowed Triodos to get up and running on the platform quickly. Henk shares his feedback on the implementation experience, “The whole implementation process has been very pleasant and efficient. They’re all very responsive to what we want, and I know we have a very complicated research process to capture.” Bipsync also enhanced several Excel field sync capabilities including support for grouped list fields and updating list fields via Excel syncs. Triodos also had additional properties to certain API endpoints added for their internal controls and compliance reporting.

Triodos has already seen significant ROI on Bipsync in terms of resources and time saved. Henk recently calculated the current ROI, explaining, “Bipsync saves us 2,200 hours per year, which is more than one full-time employee. We were budgeting for 1,500 to achieve a financial breakeven point. We’re still making some efficiencies over the next six to 12 months. Eventually, we will be able to save almost two full-time employees. That’s significant.”