Niels Fibæk-Jensen, CEO, Matter
Today we’re meeting Niels Fibæk-Jensen, the CEO of Matter, a company revolutionizing sustainability and ESG data solutions for the financial sector.
Over to you Niels:
Who are you and what’s your background?
I have a background in international relations, and worked for the United Nations in Copenhagen and the Danish mission to the UN in New York prior to founding Matter.
At the UN, I mainly worked on financing for climate objectives and sustainable development, including on how to mobilize capital for environmental and social objectives, and this is what led to the founding of Matter.
Prior to that, I have a degree in International Business and Politics from Copenhagen Business School.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
I am CEO of Matter, which means my general area of responsibility covers everything from leading our team, setting strategy, reporting to investors and board members and supporting our clients and partners. On a day-to-day basis, it gets very broad very quickly.
Can you give us an overview of your business?
Matter provides sustainability data, analytics and reporting solutions for institutional investors. We pride ourselves on providing granular and transparent insights that help our clients make more sustainable investment decisions. We service asset managers, asset owners, investment consultants and platforms with data and analytics to help them understand the sustainability of their investment portfolios. Our data is used to power ESG investments in more than 70 companies across 12 countries.
Tell us how you are funded?
We are funded by Nasdaq Ventures, as well as a range of business angels, including the founders of the NREP (Nordic Real Estate Partners). Nasdaq Ventures led our Series A round in 2020, and we have been partnering with Nasdaq since 2019.
What’s the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
Having worked with mobilizing capital for sustainable development objectives in the UN, we struggled to mobilize capital from particularly the large institutional investors. At the time, my co-founder and I thought that there would be appetite for a pension plan based entirely on sustainable investments, and as a result, we built the first of that kind in Denmark and launched it in 2018. However, we fairly quickly realized that other asset owners in particular were interested in the analytics we developed for our internal use, and started to sell portfolio reports to others in 2019, before we changed the course of the company fully in 2020.
Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?
We provide a platform for portfolio analytics as well as an API for data extraction for clients. Our clients range from international asset managers to asset owners, investment consultants, banks and investment platforms, and where some prefer to have access to raw data, other prefers access to a platform that handles their analysis and reporting workflow in a few clicks. We typically provide annual licenses for either data or platform access.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
I’d really love to see more B2C-facing products that were less inhibited by the need for a partnership with a major financial player due to regulation, but that is probably wishful thinking for now.
What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?
I would ask one question — what do you need in order to find value in sustainability data and to help your clients make sense of it?
Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?
I mainly read ESG-specific news, particularly Responsible Investor and ESG Today, and then otherwise follow the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.
Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?
Not particularly Fintech-specific, but three people I find inspiring:
- Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, Co-Founder, Female Invest
- Sophie Bohr Grønbæk, Co-Founder, Undo Insurance
- Katja Grothe-Eberhardt, CEO and Co-Founder, Klimate.co
What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?
I’m the most analogue, old school user you can think of.
But I have been a big fan of Danish Undo (insurance), and I have also enjoyed investing with the Unconventional Ventures syndicate on Funderbeam.
What’s the best new FinTech product or service you’ve seen recently?
I’ve been impressed with Francis.app, they provide financial planning for scaleups/startups, and the product seems very good.
Finally, let’s talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
One problem that investors have today is a reporting obligation to provide data on investment portfolios, where the underlying companies are yet to disclose ESG and sustainability data.
Therefore, in my own area of sustainability data, we will see a much higher emphasis on reported data and much, much improved precision in the more exotic areas of sustainability, especially around biodiversity and asset level data, where there is currently a range of interesting projects taking place.
Thank you very much for participating Niels.
You can connect with Niels Fibæk-Jensen on LinkedIn and find out more about Matter at https://www.thisismatter.com/.
