Inter-American Development Bank is an international financial organization that has maintained the economic systems of the Latin American countries and he Caribbean. At the same time, IADB is in charge of financing the region’s development.
Since 2019, together with Spherical, our long-term partner, we have been cooperating with the organization’s scientific department that works with sustainable economy projects. Spherical has been in charge of engineering and development, JetStyle has covered the design function.
Companies all round the globe are looking for ways to reduce their environmental impact. This activity works with these core goals:
Businesses either develop their own ecological initiatives or finance existing ones, and engage in green investment.
Green Bonds Transparency Platform is an online service that takes into account the current climate change objectives, follows the requirements of sustainable development and ensures green bonds market transparency in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Issuers:
various commercial and non-commercial companies. They upload information about their eco initiatives and issue green bonds to attract investment.
Investors:
the ones who purchase the green bonds: governments, banks, funds. They use the platform to search for initiatives to invest in.
Verifiers:
state officials that supervise the process of projects’ development and evaluate their ecological benefits.
The Bank needed a platform that would consolidate all data in the green bonds market. At the start of our cooperation, IADB had collected a solid scientific database. However, they needed a more thorough understanding of business processes they needed to reflect in the platform’s functionality.
At the beginning, our job was to develop prototypes of several platform pages. Then our partners would visit COP25, a climate initiative conference organized by the United Nations, show the prototypes and get feedback from colleagues.
The platform was supposed to store a lot of diverse information. We thought it would be more than logical to make the style as laconic as possible. That solution would help the users keep their focus. The priority is data visualization, minimalistic yet clear.
To ensure easier perception, we illustrated crucial data indicators as infographics. To accentuate the platform’s ecological focus, we used natural colors, mostly shades of green and blue.
At the stage of the platform’s conceptualization, together with IADB’s and Spherical’s teams we created several user scenarios and developed hypotheses about its functionality.
Initially, the basic platform pages are available for all groups of users. All data on the bonds, their costs, categories, payments made and reports, is open to any visitor.
After signing up in the platform, users work in customized pages:
Using all these ideas, we created prototypes for the main page, bonds page and investors’ portfolio.
We created a clickable prototype of all the layouts so that everyone could visualize the process of using the platform. IADB made a screencast to demonstrate the project to investors.
Hence, while preparing design for the investment idea, we build the foundation of the future platform. The created framework is the centerpiece of the platform’s visual component. Developers can add controls, modal windows, tables.
When the Bank received financing, developers could immediately proceed with the concept.
When we started working with the database, we realized that preliminary design components were not enough. Each bond is specific and requires separate functions to be correctly published on the platform. While the developer team were working on the development, we helped them with the design part and consulted them on the layout.
To make navigation easier, we added more search filters: by countries, categories, types of issuers, currency, years, external evaluation, stock exchange, programs, level of maturity and topic (ecology or sustainable development).
Also, we improved the bonds summary table. The filters are now located in the side menu. Above the table, a user can see crucial statistical data on the effect of the eco projects: how much the emissions decreased or how much renewable energy was generated, etc.
At first the developers worked on the functionality of the dashboard, then we created the UI design and collected all the elements into a convenient UI Kit. The dashboard does not have a permanent set of features: it changes according to the users’ feedback and IDB’s suggestions. The specific feature of this UI kit is that it is sufficient enough to solve any possible UI tasks.
The platform has been available to all since April 2021. Since that time it has taken the leading positions in the South American region. Green Bonds Transparency Platform attracted 80% of all local investors, which exceeds target numbers by several times than the planned number.
The service has won the Initiative of the Year Award according to the leading industry magazine, Environmental Finance. Their internal awards jury praised the platform for a focus on emerging markets countries.
We supervise the design processes, as the platform is constantly evolving. New green bonds requirements are regularly released by the UN and the market, the methodology of bonds reporting changes as well. We keep up to date with new rules and regulations, as we adjust the functionality of the platform. We are happy and proud to be a part of this activity.
