An Initiative to improve transparency and accountability in the responsible finance industry using blockchain technology has been announced by the Responsible Finance & Investment Foundation (RFI). The initiative aims to bring together financial institutions and civil society to rebuild trust in the financial industry.

The CDIT Initiative (pronounced as ‘seed it’) was developed to cope with the disparity of massive growth in financial assets being invested sustainably whilst trust in the financial remains at the level it was in 2009.

The CDIT Initiative tackles two related issues facing the responsible finance industry globally in taking action to rebuild trust. First, financial institutions’ commitments in line with existing responsible finance initiatives have not translated into rebuilding trust with society because of the presence of a small number of institutions who are using the growth of responsible finance to ‘greenwash’ their image.

Second, financial institutions who have recently embraced responsible finance face large informational barriers in translating general responsible finance principles into concrete actions that have been shown to be successful.

Blake Goud, CEO of RFI Foundation commented: “We must engage with all the relevant stakeholders including the financial industry, FinTech, blockchain companies and civil society, to create a more inclusive future to ensure that we leave no one behind. Together, we can create a database with time-secured commitments and actions that can improve the effectiveness of existing sustainable & inclusive finance initiatives.”

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