At a time when companies strive to become more sustainable, interest rates are rising and financial pressures are increasing sharply, delivering highly sustainable, innovative and cost-efficient services is crucial in the property industry. To gain a competitive advantage and become even more attractive for prospective clients, Swedish real estate management company BanFast Förvaltning AB looked to focus even more on sustainability and boost its operational efficiency.
BanFast realized that it could add value and unlock energy savings for its clients by gaining deeper insights into the sustainability of its portfolio. Lars Nylund, CEO at BanFast Förvaltning AB, says: “One of my most important tasks as CEO is to provide value for money for our clients – be it office tenants or property owners. We saw an opportunity to become an innovation and sustainability leader in our sector by digitizing, modernizing and automating the way we approach sustainability and reporting.”
With its existing tools and solutions, BanFast employees often struggled to find the right metrics to guide sustainability initiatives. This led to duplicate work, creating additional costs and slowing down the business. “We were looking for a new, modern and highly productive sustainability solution that could grow with us,” adds Nylund. “It was crucial for us to ensure that essential sustainability metrics based on measurements, materials, supply chain details and smart meter data could be versioned and updated easily. We want to proactively use the huge volumes of data we have to continuously increase the value of our buildings for commercial tenants and owners.”
Additionally, BanFast wanted to be one step ahead and get ready for new regulatory requirements based on the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). “I have a real passion for sustainability and fully support the ‘European Green Deal’ initiative which aims to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050,” says Nylund. “By better understanding and minimizing the environmental impact of the property industry, we can be a force of change for good. Being able to quickly provide detailed sustainability reports will also add real value for our clients.”
Two large refurbishment projects provided BanFast with a big opportunity to showcase its sustainability expertise to existing and future clients. “When working on our own buildings, we have full control over all aspects of the refurbishment project and the operational data,” confirms Nylund. “These projects presented us with the unique chance to show what is possible and how we could use sustainability data more effectively across our entire portfolio. Getting it right now would enable us to provide better services and win new clients more easily in the future.”
Simplify the capture, consolidation, management, analysis and reporting of your sustainability and ESG data.
predicted across the property portfolio.
supported by new insights and automation, BanFast aims to grow its property portfolio.
To strengthen its environmental, social and corporate governance reporting capabilities, BanFast set out to replace its existing solution. “We needed more flexibility to add a broader range of data sources to analyze the environmental performance of our buildings in completely new ways,” explains Nylund. “We wanted a powerful, easy-to-manage, standardized solution offering a high level of automation to seamlessly integrate with smart buildings full of advanced IoT sensors generating large amounts of data.”
BanFast approached sustainability specialist Edsvärd Hållbarhet to renew the foundation of its sustainability strategy by implementing IBM® Envizi™ ESG Suite. After the initial setup, BanFast plans to scale information management and reporting up to cover its entire property portfolio. “The experienced team at Edsvärd Hållbarhet shares our passion for sustainability and the environment,” confirms Nylund. “They have comprehensive knowledge about the real estate industry and know the best digital solutions, such as IBM Envizi, to overcome the challenges the industry faces right now.”
The new cloud solution leverages AI to create a consolidated environment for sustainability reporting. The specialists at Edsvärd Hållbarhet manage and optimize the solution for BanFast. “We looked at different options and nothing came close to the combination of Edsvärd Hållbarhet and IBM Envizi,” adds Nylund. “With the comprehensive cloud solution we can benefit from an actively developed tool and achieve a fast return on investment. Furthermore, the intuitive visualizations and customizable dashboards help us to engage more effectively with our clients and stakeholders.”
Moreover, IBM Envizi gives BanFast the flexibility to support a wider range of ESG frameworks. “We’re now mainly thinking about European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) to generate new reports for our clients who will be required to deliver ESG information based on the EU CSRD,” elaborates Nylund. “In the future, we might need to supply clients with reports complying with other international reporting frameworks too. With IBM Envizi, we can offer that much more easily. We can also, for example, cover additional accounting standards for greenhouse gas emissions.”
The new sustainability analytics capabilities enable BanFast to make better decisions that minimize energy consumption significantly and save costs, especially when renovating buildings. By using IBM Envizi, BanFast can also develop advanced sustainability strategies and increase awareness among the team. “We’re predicting that with a data-driven approach, we will reduce our energy usage by 50%,” confirms Nylund. “That’s a massive improvement that will lower the long-term costs for us, the property owners and also the tenants.”
BanFast expects to get access to attractive ‘green loans’ with lower rates thanks to its improved sustainability reporting. “By creating a more sustainable future, we’re also cutting our financing costs,” says Nylund. “At a time of high interest rates, taking advantage of cheaper loans is a major benefit for us and our customers.”
In the future, the company is planning to go one step further and potentially require more detailed sustainability reporting and a sustainability strategy from its contractors and suppliers. “We want sustainability to underpin our entire business and supply chain,” explains Nylund. “If we work together, we can minimize our CO2 footprint and accelerate the decarbonization of the property sector.”
By streamlining its sustainability reporting and management, BanFast can punch above its weight and offer new services to its clients. The company will be able to pinpoint energy leaks faster and more effectively to come up with more targeted solutions including upgrading windows, ventilation and heating systems. “We will be able to give better guidance to our clients and help them save costs,” remarks Nylund. “With cutting-edge technology, we increase transparency across all areas of property management and can optimize building operations much more comprehensively together with our tenants, and create an overall more attractive environment for everybody.”
Nylund concludes: “Thanks to Edsvärd Hållbarhet and IBM Envizi, our team is becoming much more productive. I’m confident that we can reach our goal of doubling the managed property portfolio with only adding marginally more staff. As a leading business in sustainable property management, we expect to unlock new business opportunities and seek to attract like-minded clients who care about sustainability as much as we do.”
BanFast Förvaltning is an innovative real estate company based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company owns four properties and manages 23 buildings in total including offices, retail units, hotels and conference centers. Prioritizing sustainability, BanFast only serves its local area. Providing personal and reliable services, the company achieves an annual revenue of SEK100 million (USD 9.17 million).
IBM Business Partner Edsvärd Hållbarhet is specialized on digital transformation in the property management and real estate industries. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Edsvärd Hållbarhet is a consulting company and innovation hub focused on sustainability and long-term efficiency. The company helps its clients to reach their goals with market-leading IBM sustainability reporting solutions.
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