Virgin Money has extended its relationship with data fintech Life Moments to offer sustainable solutions to its business banking customers.
The move is part of Virgin Money’s plan to develop its working capital health proposition, which will be launched in Autumn 2021. Its aim is to transform its existing business current accounts, as well as carry out commitments relating to sustainability.
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Graeme Sands, corporate and mid-market director at Virgin Money, said: “All businesses, whatever their size or industry, should be thinking about their approach to sustainability, ensuring that any future growth strategy takes into consideration the ESG impact of their operations.
“This isn’t an easy task, but those that do so often find new opportunities and we are committed to working with our customers and partners, like Life Moments, to provide the support and insight that allows them to work towards becoming a more sustainable business.”
Life Moments provides tools to improve customer experience and generate data insight. The two companies have worked together since early 2020, initially launching Virgin Money’s Home Buying Coach app, designed to simplify the home purchase process and help first time buyers get on the property ladder.
Becoming more sustainable
Through the extended partnership, the bank will focus on digitising and capturing customer responses to an ESG benchmarking tool, developed by the bank in conjunction with Future-Fit Business. It will also integrate the results and data into the bank’s new business current account wellness tracker to provide coaching for businesses.
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By GlobalDataFurthermore, the agreement is expected to contribute towards Virgin Money’s recently launched ESG commitments and aspirations, including at least halving its carbon emissions across everything it finances by 2030.
Gavin Opperman, group business director at Virgin Money, said: “Sustainability is a key element of our new working capital health proposition. Life Moments has brought exciting innovation into our mortgage business, so it was a natural progression to invite them to collaborate on enhancing our Benchmarking Tool and support our ambition to help our customers on all aspects of their ESG journey.
“We have created a strong base but there is more to do, which is why this partnership with Life Moments is so important the development of our new business current account.”
In September 2020, the Banking Competition Remedies (BCR) Capability and Innovation Fund awarded £35m to Virgin Money to help expand its business services.
In light of this, the bank has plans to increase lending by an extra £2.2bn by the end of 2025 – more than £100m of new lending will go to clients pursuing ESG aims.
Ben Leonard, CEO and co-founder of Life Moments, said: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to extend our partnership with Virgin Money and apply digital coaching to business banking. Being able to apply our platform technology to helping businesses embed sustainability is extremely exciting for us and aligns perfectly with our profit & purpose mission.”
