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| Type | Working Paper |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | Sustainable Digital Finance: Developing a Taxonomy for FinTech, InsurTech, and Blockchain |
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| Authors |
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| Language |
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| Institution | University of Zurich |
| Series Name | Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab |
| Number | 3 |
| Date | 2021 |
| Abstract Text | Although sustainability is one of human mankind’s grand challenges, the contribution from the financial sector has still been limited so far. But the financial system is currently being reshaped by sustainability and digitization in parallel as the core drivers of a long-term transformation process covering novel solutions such as blockchain based for peer-to-peer payment platforms in the energy sector or crowdfunding platforms for agricultural supply chain. This trend is reflected in a growing number of start-ups in this field. However, existing research on the topic of Sustainable Digital Finance, which bridges both areas, is still rare and either focuses on single case studies, on certain industries or on single 16 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A more comprehensive understanding of the business models, products and services, processes and the technologies of these approaches and their impact on the SDGs is a missing component in existing research. Therefore, this paper first develops a taxonomy based on a comprehensive literature analysis to structure this emerging field more precisely. In the second step, based on the taxonomy developed from 32 research papers, 126 startups in this field are analyzed and mapped against the taxonomy. The taxonomy includes a strategic, an organizational, a systems and a sustainable benefits perspective which are structured along the dimensions business model, product/service type (strategic perspective), network type, stakeholder interaction, business processes (organizational perspective), application type, application design (systems perspective) and the SDGs 1-17 (sustainable benefits perspective). The application of the taxonomy to 126 startups, which were identified in a global search exercise, reveals that their solutions primarily focus on applications in the energy and financial services sector while other sectors are still hesitant in applying FinTech models to their businesses to increase their sustainability efforts. In addition, the major focus of these models is only on five of the seventeen SDGs (7, 9, 11, 13, 17), which shows a clear preference for climate, energy, infrastructure, cities, and partnerships as the primary goals. Surprisingly, the startups focus merely on operational efficiency optimization like improved processes rather than disruptive innovations in product or customer-related areas. |
| Other Identification Number | merlin-id:20799 |
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