Sustainability

Back in 2012, Steve Round was chairman of The Big Issue Foundation. The UK Charity offers people facing exclusion and poverty with an opportunity to earn their own money, particularly by being vendors for its weekly magazine.

As a result of his work with the foundation, Steve wanted to create a bank account for people on low incomes, who were typically not attractive to banks and excluded from the financial system.

Working with Nelson Wootton, the Change Account was born. The Change Account was an inclusive transactional account that offered secure wallets, advice and payment alerts.

Steve and Nelson believed that bringing the ethos of the Change Account to a new Cloud Native Core Banking platform would enable organisations at any scale to offer financial solutions to their customers. From these beginnings, SaaScada was born.

Financial Services providers can and should make a significant impact in the race to Net Zero. All of these providers should not only be challenging themselves but also their suppliers to have a Net Zero plan.

SaaScada is leading the way for cloud-native banking solutions by being the first to commit to achieving Net Zero. Net Zero differs from ‘carbon neutral’ as this can be achieved by simply offsetting the carbon emissions of a business or home; whereas Net Zero means reducing emissions to their lowest amount through energy efficient measures, and only then using an offsetting initiative to balance remaining unchanged practices to remove emissions.

Our Events Processor feeds our customers with real time data, allowing them to use their preferred ESG reporting methods to measure not only their own carbon footprint but also that of their own customers.

When most of us picture tackling extreme poverty, we often think of education of children, clean drinking water, basic health care, female empowerment or improved childhood nutrition. However, the long term solution is more nuanced.  Poverty and the climate crisis are inextricably linked and unfortunately, those who have contributed least to the crisis are those most affected by the consequences – people living in poverty and future generations.

Access to financial services has been highlighted by the World Bank and The UN as key to eradicating poverty and solving the climate crisis. Something our two founders feel passionate about.

Harnessing the power of financial services can help people to pay for schooling, save for a home, or start a small business that can provide jobs for others; enabling people to escape the type of poverty that for generations was thought to be inescapable.  We are passionate about financial inclusivity.  

If every person on this planet has access to a quality banking product we could be the generation that ends poverty forever.

One transaction at a time.

Financial inclusion has been identified as an enabler for 7 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.  According to the World Bank, financial inclusion is a key enabler to reducing poverty and boosting prosperity.

At SaaScada we have always believed that technology can be a force for good.  We were born from the desire to create first class core banking technology to enable financial institutions to offer the very best financial services and products to their customers. 

Infrastructure and technology improvements even in the poorest regions of the world have now made it possible for everyone to access banking. Even in areas where power grids do not exist, use of solar panels and other technologies has made it possible to access 4G and 5G – opening up a world of mobile banking opportunities for people even in the most remote regions. 

Closer to home, we also enable financial institutions to provide first class offerings to those who traditionally had to settle for second rate products – or no access at all. The power of financial inclusivity to change lives cannot be underestimated and we are proud to be part of that journey.