Fintech News

How FinTech Is Building the Infrastructure for Sustainable Finance

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In a single planet with finite resources, the sustainable development of our industrial civilization is a pressing concern. This is, of course, a technological challenge, requiring clean energy sources and improved reuse of resources such as metals, biomaterials, and other minerals.

This is also a financial challenge, as determining how to direct capital toward sustainable activities is crucial to building a more resilient economy and society.

Until recently, green financing mostly meant using funds to build renewable energy, carbon capture, or recycling projects.

This is changing as investable green-finance opportunities increasingly shift toward digital infrastructure that verifies climate claims, prices sustainability risk, routes capital, and reduces greenwashing.

A research paper by researchers in Bangladesh at Jashore University of Science and Technology, Ranada Prasad Shaha University, Comilla University, and Jagannath University analyzes this evolution. It was published in World Development Sustainability1, under the title “Sustainable finance through FinTech: An in-depth review of global trends and insight”.

The Rise Of Sustainable FinTech

FinTech (Financial Technology) companies are driving a wave of innovation in financial services, enabled by the convergence of mobile platforms, internet technology, and data analytics.

This is rapidly changing how financial services work, especially compared with the traditional financial system, which relies on antiquated infrastructure, in-person services, and slower, centralized operations.

This study analyzed the impact of FinTech on sustainable finance through a systematic literature review of publications from 2020 to 2025. Out of 268 studies considered, 70 were selected for the final review.

It revealed a rapidly increasing volume of global research in this field, with China, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Pakistan making particularly significant contributions, with, for example, the most cited publication being “The impact of fintech innovation on green growth in China: Mediating effect of green finance” and China leading the field.

It was generally found that FinTech is greatly helping to deploy ESG initiatives through financial inclusion and better data for ESG reporting:

“FinTech advancements such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and digital payment systems have facilitated financial inclusion and sustainable finance practices by making green investments more accessible and improving the transparency of ESG reporting”

A Sector In Development

Analyzing the topics covered by these publications, the researchers categorized them into four quarters:

  • Highly relevant, highly developed themes: sustainable development, socioeconomic effects.
  • Highly relevant, in-development thematics: carbon emissions, environmental management.
  • Medium relevance, highly developed themes: decentralized finance, green energy.
  • Low relevance, poorly developed thematic: non-renewable resources, energy transformation.

This highlights how fields like carbon emissions and environment-related decision-making are still in an emerging phase, with both academic research and FinTech companies catching up to the needs of this sector.

Overall, the researchers identified 4 clusters of topics: fintech & decision-making, energy-related themes, carbon and natural resources, and green development & policies.

How Does FinTech Build Sustainable Finance?

Climate And ESG Data

With carbon emissions an ever-growing concern, the FinTech sector is at the forefront to help properly account for this form of pollution and the efforts made to alleviate it:

  • At a company or project level, this takes the form of emissions tracking, carbon metrics, and adoption of low-carbon technologies or practices.
  • For regulators, this can also integrate automatic tracking of carbon emissions through sensors, as well as ESG measurement and satellite data.
  • At the investment level, this means that FinTech can provide exposure analysis, access to carbon markets, issuer verification, and portfolio screening.

Altogether, these FinTech solutions can be integrated into a single, end-to-end carbon-tracking system that solves the problem of measuring carbon emissions.

Digital Finance Infrastructures

Beyond green policies, FinTech has been largely successful in payments, transactions, and related areas, thanks to its superior performance relative to legacy financial institutions.

The same strength is being deployed in ESG services covering KYC (Know Your Customers), lending, underwriting, payments, green bonds, etc.

The higher efficiency and data-driven approach allow for lower cost of capital allocations and lower risks.

This also makes the distribution of financing for green initiatives a lot smoother and scalable.

Transparency And Verification

Thanks to the connectivity allowed by FinTech solutions, investors, lenders, regulators, and auditing firms can get access to a lot more data.

In ESG-related topics and sustainable finance, this translates into:

  • Permanent records and unfalsifiable blockchain audit trails.
  • Real-time reporting with integration to ERP software (Enterprise Resource Planning).
  • Anti-greenwashing controls by accredited organizations.

The result is that what has been both difficult to measure and often treated with skepticism by investors and the public can now be verified and trusted. This results in genuinely credible disclosure matching for regulatory and institutional demands.

Investing In Sustainable Finance

MSCI

(MSCI )

As sustainable finance turns from a niche to a mainstream requirement for financial providers, the companies that have moved early in building the corresponding infrastructure will benefit.

MSCI is a world-class provider of financial instruments for both domestic & international investors through its various indexes and rating systems.

So while it is not financing solar installations or issuing green bonds itself, it sells the measurement, risk, index, and disclosure infrastructure that institutional capital increasingly needs before allocating money to sustainable assets.

Source: MSCI

No less than 21 trillion dollars are invested according to MSCI indexes and funds, of which $13.7T is active and $7.3T is indexed, or more than 16% of the global $130T in managed assets.

This means the company’s 6,300+ employees are trusted by 6,700 institutional clients worldwide in 100+ countries.

Asset managers make up the majority of the company’s customers, followed by banks and asset owners. 45% are from the Americas and 38% from EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, Africa).

Source: MSCI

While often not perceived as one, MSCI is a full-fledged FinTech company, with 1,900 APIs across all product lines of 1,000+ data products covering 18 million different securities daily.

The company’s revenues are very stable, with 97% or higher of revenues recurring. Revenues grew 11% CAGR and free cash flow 13% CAGR between 2021 and 2026.

Source: MSCI

Overall, MSCI is a good stock for investors seeking exposure to the “piping” of the financial system, at a time when investment products are increasingly sophisticated and need to incorporate not just financial data but also validated ESG reference points to become sustainable finance.

Latest MSCI (MSCI) Stock News and Developments

Study Referenced

1. Nibedita Paul, et al. Sustainable finance through FinTech: An in-depth review of global trends and insights. World Development Sustainability. Volume 9, December 2026, 100336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wds.2026.100336

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Jonathan is a former biochemist researcher who worked in genetic analysis and clinical trials. He is now a stock analyst and finance writer with a focus on innovation, market cycles and geopolitics in his publication 'The Eurasian Century".