The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority (MCA) aims to establish an innovative Investment Platform and Marketplace to align with its Climate Ecological Strategy and Action Plan (CESAP 2023). The platform will help achieve nature recovery and halt environmental decline by 2030, supporting Bath, Bristol, Northeast Somerset, and South Gloucestershire (West of England Region).
The Mayoral Combined Authority will procure an external software developer to create an investment platform that supports funding and investment within the West of England region. This platform will host a range of natural capital assets, offering investors a dedicated tool to track nature-based assets and monitor the impact of their investments.
The platform aims to streamline the investment process, providing transparency and real-time insights into asset performance and environmental benefits. Through this initiative, we hope to attract more sustainable funding into the region, aligning investments with regional conservation and climate goals.
This is a project with plenty of scope for bespoke development (and the delivery of value within that scope), but where the end-user requirements are actually fairly well defined and controllable.
Key factors are compliance, automation (as in, requiring a minimum of administrative intervention), and alignment with the Authority’s Action Plan. Online payments for investing will be a strong consideration as many platforms do not allow such activities, regardless of the user or client, thus a good relationship with a more direct payment processor / MOR will be a strong play against those simply recommending stripe or PayPal.
Reporting and accountability will be varied, so flexibility in the platform will be key.
