Rethinking how banks integrate green solutions

People are demanding more from banks. Not just better rates or digital services, but sustainable solutions. In fact, half of consumers want their bank to offer tools that support more sustainable choices, whether that’s understanding their carbon footprint or helping make their homes more energy-efficient to reduce bills and their environmental impact.

Banks are responding to this demand, integrating green products and services into the banking experience. Yet, many solutions are struggling to gain traction and deliver tangible impact for both customers and the bank. So, how can banks bridge the gap between intent and engagement?

Embedding sustainability into the core customer journey

In many banks, sustainability is still handled by separate teams, often disconnected from core product, digital, and commercial functions. This separation can limit opportunities to embed green thinking into everyday banking experiences, where it has the greatest potential to influence behaviour and deliver impact. 

This fragmentation shows up in the customer journey too. Home energy tools and sustainability hubs often sit in separate sections of the app or website, away from the transaction feed.

However, retrofitting a home or switching to a greener lifestyle are significant, high-commitment decisions that require time, awareness and carbon literacy. That’s why it’s essential to surface green tools regularly and in context. The more these tools are embedded into users’ day-to-day financial interactions, the more likely they are to engage with them and take action.

These tools become even more effective when they’re connected. For example, if a customer sees the carbon footprint of their energy bills, that’s the perfect moment to link them to a home energy tool or retrofit offer. This helps create a joined-up, empowering experience, one that helps users build confidence and momentum in their sustainability journey.

Driving engagement through personalised, timely insights

To truly engage customers, banks need to personalise the sustainability journey. By using spending data to estimate the carbon emissions of individual actions, banks can surface tailored recommendations that help users reduce their footprint. When integrated directly into the transaction feed, these insights become part of the everyday experience—timely, relevant, and easy to engage with. This not only builds carbon literacy but also drives further interactions, increasing dwell time as users explore lifestyle-based actions they can take. 

Crucially, this opens up natural pathways to link other tools and products. For example, a customer who sees high emissions from home energy use could be seamlessly directed to home energy tools or green financing options. While users who commit to taking lower-carbon actions might be rewarded in real-time through green rewards, reinforcing positive behaviour. Beyond enhancing the user experience, this approach also creates commercial value, opening up natural opportunities to upsell and cross-sell green products in ways that feel supportive and relevant.

Partnering with fintechs for speed and scale

Building personalised and integrated sustainability experiences can be complex, especially when working with legacy systems. Traditional banking infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle complex data sets, particularly behavioural or environmental data. As a result, it can be difficult to connect customers’ financial activity with relevant sustainability insights in a meaningful, timely way. 

Fintech partners can help banks overcome infrastructure and capability gaps by offering ready-made platforms and APIs that embed seamlessly into existing digital journeys. These partnerships allow for banks to move faster, innovate more easily, and meet rising customer expectations without starting from scratch. 

How Cogo can help your bank drive engagement and value

Cogo helps banks seamlessly embed sustainability into everyday banking. Our Carbon Insights solution uses transaction data to estimate customers’ carbon footprints and surface personalised, real-time recommendations.  

By integrating these insights directly into the core digital journey, we help banks move beyond static sustainability content or siloed hubs, and instead offer a dynamic experience that builds carbon literacy, deepens engagement, and drives meaningful action, all while increasing dwell time, trust, and cross-sell opportunities. 

Our home energy tool goes even further, identifying households with high energy emissions and surfacing tailored retrofit advice and green financing options. Helping to enhance your banks' digital value proposition and drive more uptake of green finance solutions. 

Whether you’re looking to de-risk your portfolio or simply engage customers in more meaningful ways, Cogo provides the infrastructure and insights to make it happen.

Ready to build a better banking experience? Let’s talk.