How Zencap AM industrializes ESG across its private debt strategies with Greenscope

• Objective: roll out a consistent, industrialisable ESG approach across every private debt strategy (Corporate, Infrastructure, Real Estate) to meet regulatory requirements (SFDR, Article 29 of the French Energy-Climate Law), respond to investor expectations and steer ESG performance.
• Challenge: collect and validate ESG data every year from a diverse set of portfolio companies, while producing PAIs, the EET, KPIs and an ESG score that is comparable across funds.
• Solution: for the past two years, Greenscope's SaaS platform has digitised ESG campaigns, automated the calculation of PAIs and sustainability indicators, supported the production of the EET, scored borrowers by strategy, and provided carbon proxies and individualised dashboards.
• Result: large-scale annual campaigns with a high response rate (> 85%), reliable and comparable data, secure regulatory reporting, and an experience praised by both Zencap AM and its borrowers.

• Sector: European private debt (Private Debt / Direct Lending)
• Group: Ofi Invest
• Assets under management: ~ €3.8bn
• Strategies: Corporate Debt (SMEs and mid-caps), Infrastructure Debt, Real Estate Debt, Public Sector Debt, Specialised Financing (securitisation, granular portfolios of loans to small and mid-sized businesses, etc.)
• Coverage: Europe (with a focus on France, the DACH region, Benelux and Southern Europe)
• ESG commitments: PRI signatory (2020); NZAMi, iCI and FfB (2023); SFO (2024); proprietary SEZAM methodology; 2030 Climate Strategy aligned with the Paris Agreement; member of France Invest's Sustainability Commission; SFDR Article 8 and Article 9 funds

With several strategies to manage and mounting regulatory requirements, Zencap AM needed to make its ESG framework more reliable without adding to its operational burden.

• A highly diversified portfolio (Corporate, Infrastructure, Real Estate) that ruled out a single questionnaire
• More than 100 companies to survey each year, against a backdrop of constantly evolving requirements
• Investor reporting and the EET, which demand verified, consistent and time-stamped data
• No operational control over borrowers, making the collection experience decisive for the response rate
• Calculating PAIs and carbon proxies across a universe where data is sometimes incomplete, particularly on Scope 3

Over the past two years, Greenscope has covered Zencap AM's entire ESG value chain, from data collection through to reporting, built around four pillars.

1. Digitised collection, tailored to each strategy

Three separate questionnaires (Corporate, Infrastructure, Real Estate) bring together market standards (France Invest, SFDR, EDCI) and Zencap AM's own requirements. They capture the data needed to calculate PAIs (both mandatory and additional), to produce the EET, Zencap AM's own KPIs (scoring, climate maturity) and carbon data. Automated consistency checks raise alerts in real time.

2. A seamless experience for portfolio companies

The success of a campaign hinges on the ability to bring on board SMEs and mid-caps that rarely have an ESG department. The platform removes that barrier:

• A simple interface that requires no training
• Smart pre-filling from one year to the next
• Multilingual support and hands-on guidance from the Greenscope teams
• Direct access for each company to its own dashboard

Portfolio companies no longer simply "fill in a questionnaire": they get something back, in the form of a structured view of their ESG performance.

3. PAIs, the EET, scoring and carbon proxies: industrialising the analysis

Once the data has been validated, the Greenscope teams:

• Calculate PAIs by fund and by strategy
• Support the production of the EET in FinDatEx format
• Calculate regulatory and voluntary KPIs
• Build a proprietary ESG score by strategy (against a benchmark)
• Construct sector-based carbon proxies for 100% coverage

The whole process is validated by a dedicated ESG consultant, ensuring methodological rigour and traceability.

4. Reporting through individualised dashboards

• For Zencap AM: a consolidated view by strategy and by fund to steer performance and feed investor reporting.
• For borrowers: a summary dashboard showing their ESG performance, their key indicators and sector benchmarks.

• Fully industrialised ESG campaigns across all three strategies
• Stronger data reliability and comparability
• Significant time savings for the teams, freed from low-value tasks
• 100% carbon coverage of the portfolio (actual footprints ~75%, topped up with proxies)
• An improved borrower experience: a response rate above 85% and positive feedback
• Sustainability embedded as a driver of dialogue, in line with the 2030 Climate Strategy

With Greenscope, Zencap AM has taken a step change in the way it structures, validates and puts its ESG data to work — for the benefit of borrowers and investors alike.