The sustainable finance sector has reached a turning point where the sheer volume of sustainability data is no longer the industry’s chief obstacle, according to Prometeia.
Instead, investors, financial institutions and policymakers are grappling with a more pressing problem: information that is reliable, comparable and genuinely capable of underpinning informed decision-making remains in short supply.
This is the challenge that Impact Intel, a European project counting Prometeia among its partners, has set out to solve. The initiative is developing new methodologies designed to convert raw impact data into actionable intelligence, building on existing sustainability disclosures to sharpen how impact performance is analysed, interpreted and compared across the market.
Crucially, the project is not adding yet another reporting framework to an already crowded regulatory landscape. Instead, Impact Intel blends benchmarking methodologies, materiality-based indicators and analytical models drawn from financial and risk analysis. One of its most distinctive features is the integration of reported information with external stakeholder perception, a mechanism that could expose gaps between what organisations claim about their impact and how the wider market actually perceives it.
For Prometeia, the stakes are clear. The firm is contributing its expertise in sustainable finance and impact measurement for financial institutions to help build a transparent, robust and scalable framework for impact intelligence, one that could reshape how capital is allocated in the sector.
Speaking within the framework of the project, Prometeia senior partner Alessandra Lanza said, “It seeks to create a reliable and transparent standard that enables decision-makers to make informed decisions based on transparent, consistent, and trustworthy data.”
According to Lanza, the next step for sustainable finance is not collecting more data, but making impact information more dependable, comparable and actionable. She argues the future of the sector hinges on the quality of impact intelligence itself.
Drawing on existing KPIs and corporate sustainability disclosures, Impact Intel aims to contribute to common standards that make impact information more useful for investors, financial institutions and policymakers alike. With regulatory expectations mounting, Prometeia believes improving the quality of impact data will prove essential to strengthening transparency, curbing the risk of impact washing and supporting better investment decisions.
Lanza shares her full perspective on the evolution of impact intelligence, the rising demand for trustworthy impact data and the project’s contribution to the future of sustainable finance and impact investing in an interview available to watch in full.
For more, watch the full interview here.
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