Lend Green

Lend Green: Turn ESG promises into proven performance.

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Inspiration

Sustainable lending has matured fast: green loans, sustainability-linked loans, and social loans are now standard products. But the monitoring side still looks like a workaround.

ESG covenants are negotiated carefully in LMA-style documentation – SPTs, test dates, evidence requirements – and then tracked in:

  • Spreadsheets that no one fully trusts
  • Email threads that double as workflow
  • Ad-hoc portals that don’t talk to each other

Agents, ops teams, and sustainability coordinators still lack a single place to answer three basic questions:

  1. Which ESG-labelled facilities are on track?
  2. Which are overdue or at risk?
  3. Where is the evidence if anyone challenges the “green” label?

Borrowers, meanwhile, see slightly different ESG asks from every lender.

Lend Green was born from that gap:

If the loan market has standard documentation and principles, why don’t we have a standard, shared way to monitor ESG covenants after signing?

What it does

Lend Green is a Principles-aligned ESG covenant copilot for syndicated loans.

It turns the sustainability mechanics from LMA-style documentation into a structured monitoring layer:

  • Framework-aware setup Agents and sustainability coordinators select a framework (e.g. GLP / SLLP / SLP / transition) and define facility-level ESG KPIs or SPTs: baselines, targets, test dates, and evidence expectations. For example, an emissions-intensity SPT might be set as ( \text{tCO_2e} / \text{MWh} \le 0.35 ) by a given test date, with margin step-ups if the target is missed.

  • Borrower reporting workspace Borrowers get a clear, desktop-first portal per reporting period:

    • Tasks for each facility and period
    • Simple data-entry forms with the agreed targets visible
    • Drag-and-drop evidence upload tied to specific SPTs/KPIs

  • Monitoring period review for lenders For each period, Lend Green:

    • Shows targets vs reported values
    • Flags SPTs/KPIs as green / amber / red
    • Tracks whether evidence is present, missing, or marked for external review
    • Lets agents approve, query, or request changes in one screen

  • Portfolio-level visibility A dashboard for agents and ESG teams shows:

    • Number of ESG-labelled facilities by framework
    • Which have up-to-date reporting vs overdue
    • Facilities with potential data gaps or risk flags

In short: it takes ESG monitoring out of inboxes and spreadsheets and puts it into a shared, Principles-aligned workspace.

How we built it

We built Lend Green as a modern web app focused on desktop users in loan and ESG teams.

Architecture & stack

  • Frontend React SPA with a classic B2B SaaS layout:

    • Left sidebar for navigation (Dashboard, Facilities, Frameworks, Reports)
    • Top bar for institution, filters, and user role
    • Main content as cards and tables, designed for large monitors

  • Authentication & roles

    • Users sign in via Firebase Auth
    • Each user belongs to an organisation and has a role: Agent, Sustainability Coordinator, Lender, or Borrower
    • The UI adapts to role: portfolio view for agents, task view for borrowers

Data model (Firestore)

We modelled the ESG monitoring lifecycle:

  • organisations – banks, borrower groups
  • users – with role + organisation
  • facilities – syndicated facilities with framework tags (GLP / SLLP / SLP / transition) and roles (Agent, Coordinator)
  • frameworks – reusable Principles-aligned sets of SPTs/KPIs
  • sptsOrKpis – facility-level ESG measures (name, baseline, targets, test dates)
  • monitoringPeriods – quarterly/annual periods or SPT test dates with due dates and statuses
  • kpiReports – reported values, status (green/amber/red), reviewer decision per period
  • documents – evidence metadata linked to periods and SPTs/KPIs, stored in Firebase Storage

Formally, each SPT ( i ) has a baseline ( B_i ), a target path ( T_i(t) ), and reported values ( R_i(t) ). For a given test date ( t^* ), we can define a simple status rule such as:

  • green if ( R_i(t^) \le T_i(t^) )
  • amber if ( T_i(t^) < R_i(t^) \le T_i(t^*) + \Delta )
  • red if ( R_i(t^) > T_i(t^) + \Delta )

where ( \Delta ) is a tolerance band configured in the framework.

Automation (Cloud Functions)

We used serverless functions to:

  • Instantiate SPT/KPI records when a facility is created from a framework
  • Create empty KPI report slots when a monitoring period is opened
  • Calculate KPI statuses against targets and roll them up to the period/facility level

On the frontend, we focused on:

  • A portfolio dashboard for agents and ESG teams
  • A facility & period review flow for monitoring
  • A task + three-step reporting flow for borrowers

Challenges we ran into

  • Capturing the complexity of ESG frameworks without overwhelming users GLP, SLLP, and SLP introduce nuanced concepts (SPTs, test dates, external review). We had to represent these in the data model and UI in a way that feels natural to agents and sustainability coordinators, but still simple enough for a hackathon prototype.

  • Balancing lender detail with borrower simplicity Agents and ESG teams think in terms of frameworks, portfolios, and risk; borrowers think in terms of “what data do you want from me and when?”. Designing both experiences on top of the same model was a key UX challenge.

  • Deciding where Lend Green sits in the ecosystem We didn’t want to build “yet another loan OS”. The challenge was to keep the scope tight: a thin ESG monitoring layer that could plug into existing platforms, while still telling a coherent, end-to-end story for the judges.

  • Scoping for the hackathon deadline We had many ideas (advanced analytics, deeper integrations, regulatory tagging). The hard part was cutting down to a focused slice that shows the value without disappearing into edge cases.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

  • A realistic end-to-end ESG monitoring journey From framework selection, to facility setup, to borrower reporting, to lender review and portfolio visibility – the flow matches how sustainable syndicated facilities are monitored today, just without the spreadsheets.

  • Principles-aware data structures Lend Green doesn’t invent its own ESG language. SPTs, KPIs, test dates, and evidence match how ESG-linked facilities are actually documented and monitored.

  • A lender-friendly UX that still feels modern The interface is designed for loan and operations teams: tables, clear status pills, timelines, and checklists, with a calm, institutional look.

  • A clear, built-in commercial story Features like reusable frameworks, multi-facility views, and exportable ESG packs make the value proposition obvious inside the product, not just in the slide deck.

What we learned

  • ESG monitoring is a workflow problem as much as a data problem The real pain is coordinating people, deadlines, and evidence across multiple parties. Data models help, but workflow and UX are what drive adoption.

  • Standards are powerful when they’re operationalised LMA Principles and documentation provide strong foundations. The opportunity is in tools that help banks and borrowers apply those standards consistently at scale.

  • Building “alongside”, not “instead of”, existing systems is key Framing Lend Green as a monitoring layer – not a replacement OS – opens more doors and resonates better with how institutions actually adopt new tools.

  • Language matters to trust Using the vocabulary of agents, coordinators, and ESG teams (facilities, SPTs, monitoring periods) makes the product feel like it fits the loan market from day one.

What’s next for Lend Green

Beyond the hackathon, we see three main directions:

  • Deeper analytics and benchmarking Trend views across sectors, regions, and borrowers; anonymised benchmarking to help institutions understand how their ESG-linked portfolios compare.

  • Regulatory and investor reporting views Export profiles aligned with regulatory expectations and investor reporting, including taxonomy tags, key ratios, and facility-level ESG histories.

  • Tighter integrations with loan platforms APIs and connectors so Lend Green can feed and receive data from loan operating systems, digital origination platforms, and agency solutions – making ESG monitoring feel like a natural extension of existing workflows.

The long-term vision is for Lend Green to become the standard ESG monitoring layer that sits alongside LMA documentation in the syndicated sustainable loan market: one shared way to turn ESG promises into proven performance.

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