Mapping the energy efficiency of our mortgage portfolio
Monday 28 February 2022
UniCredit and RE Valuta join forces to map the energy performance of buildings used as collateral for mortgages granted by the bank. UniCredit thus positions itself as the first financial institution to undertake an operation of this scale in Italy.
UniCredit is proud to be the first bank in Italy to collect the energy performance data across the bank’s mortgage collateral book at such a significant scale. RE Valuta is a specialist in real estate appraisals and will work in partnership with the leading Italian real estate portal Immobiliare.it to provide UniCredit with access to the energy performance certificates (EPCs) across a database of 8 million EPCs.
RE Valuta will also deploy advanced machine learning for EPC assessment as well as estimating the average energy consumption and CO2 emissions for buildings without an existing EPC. This will allow UniCredit to differentiate between the so called ‘green’ or energy efficient properties and those that are considered ‘brown’ or non-efficient from an energy standpoint across its mortgage collateral portfolio, helping to meet the bank’s Pillar III reporting requirements and supporting green bond issuance.
Luciano Chiarelli, Head of Portfolio Actions & Securitisation at UniCredit Italy, commented: “The partnership just signed with RE Valuta – is part of the green and sustainable transition that UniCredit has been working towards for years. ESG is embedded in our corporate culture and decision making, and we continue to collaborate with various industry players to enrich and improve our ESG offering across sectors. We are working to support the green transition and our new strategic plan, 'UniCredit Unlocked', targets €150 billion of cumulative new ESG volumes through environmental loans, ESG investment products, sustainable bonds and social finance.”
Following the careful analysis of preliminary data quality, the service from RE Valuta will cover UniCredit’s entire Italian collateral book (list of real estate collateral for mortgage and loan disbursement) and the collateral books of five Central and Eastern European countries where the bank operates: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. This data will support our path towards net zero as well as provide us with valuable metrics to engage further with clients and support the collective transition towards a more energy-efficient future.