Onboarding

How can our organisation join?

You can join the ESG Clearing House as Founder, Participant , Funding Partner or Ambassador. To indicate your interest to participate in one of aforementioned roles you can go to 'How to join" section on our website https://esgclearinghouse.org/how-to-join and send the filled-out Letter of Intent to vco.clearinghouse@visma.com.

Are you mainly targetting larger sized companies as potential contributors or also SMEs?

The ESG Clearing House is also intended for SMEs The value proposition for SMEs lies in the following areas:

* Unlike large corporates, SMEs will more often be a supplier to large corporates. This means that they are in the upstream supply chain (scope 3) and will therefore be overwhelmed with requests to provide ESG data when the CSRD is introduced. It will therefore be much more efficient for SMEs to supply the data in a standardised manner, so that all affiliated corporates can read it directly (instead of SMEs having to fill in a multitude of questionnaires, portals or answer countless emails)

* SMEs that join the ESG Clearing House commit themselves to providing the relevant ESG data, on a peer-to-peer basis, to their buyers. This can provide a competitive advantage, where the same buyers will make the delivery of standardised ESG data part of their supplier due diligence.

Pricing

Where can I get information on the pricing?

On our website, under the 'How to join section you will find a Packages Flyer with all the information you need.

You will be a non-profit organisation; how will annual subscription pricing develop over time once the amount of participants will grow substantially?

The money that flows in through the subscriptions will be used for (a) funding the foundation (b) funding the development and maintenance of the ESG Clearing House ICT environment (c) paying back investors. Once we start monitoring a financial overcoverage caused by the growing amount of subscriptions, we will - after taking into account a safety margin of 125% to mitigate unforeseen costs - reduce the annual subscription fee.

How is the pricing behind the different packages being set up?

We have identified 5 different participant packages, that come with different annual fees and its own set of benefits and a maximum amount of annual data transactions which can be initiated. There is no threshold for only responding to Data requests or Data offers and a 'Response only' participant can use the ESG CLearing House free of charge.

The data transaction thresholds are established based upon market research and estimates, and may be changed over time once we gain operational experience. The pricing is established as an anual fee, again based on market research and a Business Case analysis for the different prticipants. Over time the pricing model may be turned into a price per tick model, however that model was felt not be feasible during the start-up phase of the ESG Clearing house.

Importantly to note is that the ESG Clearing House is set up as a non-profit. Fees from participants will be used to fund better product development, maintenance and support, wider adoption or lowering fees for participants.

What will happen if I overrun the amount of annual transactions?

The ESG Clearing House Admin Center will give prior notification to the participant SPOC of an expected overrun. The remaining period of the contractual year will be reimbursed pro rata against the higher package annual rate.

I will only provide data, not initiate a data request. Is this for free?

Yes, absolutely. The ESG Clearing House is for free for those Participants that will only provide data as a response to a data request that is initiated by another Participant.

Partners

You made the choice to be non-profit - what value will each founder gain from sharing & building this platform?

The ESG Clearing House will not pay dividends and will only return a limited, reasonable return-on-investment to its funders.

The founders aren't necessarily the same as the funders. The founders have invested and are still investing through their in-kind contributions.

The business value for the founders is the ability to influence the ideation process, the co-creation of the ESG Clearing House based on their shared principles, vision and mission. The founders are proponents and stewards of a fair, reliable peer-to-peer ESG data exchange to enable its participants to enhance integrated thinking, decision-making and wider value creation.

Can advisory and technology companies, industry organisations, NGO's etc also become member, as partner in the eco-system to utilise and valorise the ESG data?

Absolutely. We encourage those parties to become participant, as the valorization of data is concerned with turning data into direct and discernible benefit for stakeholders. Their efforts wil create a flywheel effect for the use of the ESG Clearing House as the optimal common solution for standardized, peer-to-peer, metric by metric ESG data exchange.