In an Australian banking first, retail CommBank customers will be able “to view their personalized carbon footprint within the CommBank app from early August.”
The rollout to all CommBank retail customers “follows a pilot launched in October 2021, which allowed over 250,000 customers to view their carbon footprint, with close to a third of those who participated taking further steps to learn more about their carbon footprint.”
The technology, “developed in partnership with sustainability Fintech startup Cogo, will allow the bank’s retail customers to view their monthly carbon footprint with a comparison to the national average.”
Further, customers will be able “to see a breakdown of their carbon emissions data grouped into everyday spending categories like Utilities, Transportation, Shopping, and other transaction segments.” Customers will also “have the option to select actions to help manage their environmental footprint.”
Ben Morgan, General Manager Strategy Investments and Transformation said:
“The combination of customer data and Cogo’s capabilities, means we can now provide personalized and granular information to customers about how their spending translates to a carbon footprint. A customer’s carbon footprint is an estimate that considers things such as personalized spending data and transaction behaviours using select CommBank products, such as an Everyday account, credit cards and BPAY. We can then assign each transaction emissions factor data per industry type (ie fashion, grocery, etc.), which is provided to us by Cogo to calculate their carbon footprint.”
Ben Gleisner, Cogo Founder said:
Banks are ideally positioned to take on the role of champion in supporting their customers to lower their carbon footprint. In a highly competitive market in which it’s hard to differentiate, banks cannot ignore this opportunity to stand out and establish themselves as a lifestyle partner to the conscious consumer. There’s never been a more important time in history to reduce our carbon footprint and climate friendly actions like reducing flights, taking public transport or going vegan for one meal a week can all have an impact on that. We’re proud to be the go-to solution for change for the world’s largest banks, and we’re excited about expanding this change throughout Australia, in partnership with CommBank.”
To help customers understand more about their carbon footprint, CBA is working “with Cogo to develop a series of educational articles that explore what a carbon footprint is, easy tips to reduce your carbon footprint, and how reducing your carbon footprint can also help reduce your cost of living.”
Customers will be able “to read these articles on the CommBank Sustainability Hub.”
Cogo is “an impact-led fintech whose carbon tracking API and consumer App enables users and businesses world-wide to measure, reduce and compensate for their impact on people and planet.”