Lenders and development finance institutions

Checking a borrower’s assessment against the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards or the Equator Principles means reading every chapter for the evidence behind each requirement, and the result depends on who did the reading. EcoSphere applies the same standard to every review and shows the reviewer where the evidence is.

The submission is uploaded and the standards chosen. For each requirement the artificial intelligence quotes the passages it finds, with the document and paragraph, and the reviewer records the finding. Gaps become the action plan and the review ends in a Gap Assessment Report exported to Word. The same record serves annual monitoring and close-out.

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Setting up a review against lender standards

The review names the borrower, the review type and the standards, and holds the category the reviewer records with its reasons.

The standards held in the platform include the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards, the Equator Principles, the Common Approaches of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Export Finance Australia review checklist. Each requirement cites its source. The overview also shows which of the documents the review expects have been provided.

Regulatory coverage

The overview of an independent review named Hartsmoor Solar Farm environmental and social due diligence, showing review progress, the standards it is reviewed against, document completeness and the review setup with proponent, jurisdiction, review type and category. — A review set up against the Equator Principles, the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards and the Common Approaches of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with the category the reviewer recorded and a count of the expected documents provided. Hartsmoor Solar Farm is a fictional demo project.

The evidence for each requirement

For each requirement the artificial intelligence reports what it found in the submission, cites the paragraphs it relied on and quotes the passages with the document each came from.

The reviewer reads the quoted passages, records the finding (no gap, gap, observation, information request or not applicable) with a note, and gives a reason wherever the finding departs from what the evidence review reported. The record keeps both.

How a review runs

A requirement card in an independent review. It shows the requirement text, the evidence status Partially addressed, what the evidence review found, quoted passages from the Outline Construction Environmental Management Plan with their paragraph numbers, and the reviewer’s recorded finding with her note. — A requirement of the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards with what the evidence review found in the submission, citing the paragraphs it relied on, the passages it quotes with the document each came from, and the finding the reviewer recorded.

A lender’s review of the Hartsmoor Environmental Statement against the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards and the Equator Principles: the evidence found for each requirement, the reviewer’s findings, the gap register and action plan, and the Gap Assessment Report.

Gaps and the action plan

A gap raised from a requirement carries its severity, the corrective action, an owner and a due date.

The gap register is the environmental and social action plan. Each gap moves from open to in progress, closed and verified, and the register exports to Word and to a workbook for the borrower and the lender group.

Findings and the gap assessment report

The Findings and actions screen listing the gaps raised in the review, each with a reference, severity, the requirement it relates to, the corrective action, the owner, the due date and the status. — The gap register, which is also the action plan: each gap with its severity, the corrective action, who owns it, when it is due and its status.

The review checklist

The lender’s own review checklist is answered on the review, and the answers that need attention are flagged.

A checklist template holds the questions the lender’s procedure asks at each review. Each answer is recorded with who gave it and when, and the checklist is marked complete when the reviewer has been through it.

A review checklist on a lender’s review, open at the section on applicable standards, policies and management systems, with each item answered Yes, No, Unknown or Not relevant and a comment under some of them. — The review checklist, answered section by section, with the answers that flag a point for attention.

The Gap Assessment Report

The report is assembled from the review, approved by a named reviewer and exported to Word.

The gap register is assembled into it as the action plan, with the Equator Principles status table and the basis of the review, and the narrative sections are written in Word after export. The report cannot be submitted for approval until every requirement has a finding.

A page of the exported Gap Assessment Report showing the gap register table with reference, severity, requirement, finding, corrective action, owner, due date and status. — The Gap Assessment Report exported to Word, with the gap register as its action plan.

Annual monitoring and action plan tracking

A review set up as annual monitoring or action plan tracking runs on the same record.

The reviewer uploads the year’s monitoring reports, the artificial intelligence finds the evidence for each requirement again, and the gaps raised at due diligence are closed and verified in the register as the borrower delivers the action plan.

See EcoSphere in a demo

A walkthrough on a sample review.

We show a submitted assessment reviewed against a standard, from the evidence for each requirement to the Gap Assessment Report.