Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL) Responsible Innovation Case Study: CienDos
Shaping the future of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance Measurement and Reporting) in Financial Services
In today’s world, doing good for the planet is no longer simply a personal preference moral it’s a business imperative. Financial institutions are increasingly being asked not how much they earn, but how they earn it.
That’s where CienDos, a Glasgow-based fintech co-founded by Jules Salmond, comes in. The company helps banks and businesses understand the environmental impact of their financial decisions turning complex data relating to carbon emissions into clear, actionable insights.
When FRIL launched its ESG Innovation Call, CienDos saw a chance to accelerate its mission. Through the programme, the team developed its Financed Emissions Calculator™ and created a Sustainable Transition Plan, collaborating with major players like HSBC, Virgin Money, and Equifax.
The impact was immediate, FRIL gave CienDos early access to the market, boosted its credibility, and opened doors to new partnerships. The company retained talented interns, expanded into European markets, and strengthened its position as a leader in sustainable finance innovation.
But beyond business success, CienDos is a testament to how FRIL is helping to root fintech growth in Glasgow, showcasing the city as a rising global hub for sustainability innovation.
The Challenge: Making Carbon Data Simple
As the demand for environmental accountability grows, financial institutions face new expectations. They must measure and report their ESGperformance, not just profits.
But collecting and analysing ESG data isn’t easy. It often involves navigating fragmented data sources, inconsistent standards, and complex reporting frameworks. The process can be time-consuming, costly, and resource-heavy, leaving many organisations struggling to turn their good intentions into measurable impact.
CienDos set out to change that, to simplify the way financial institutions understand their carbon footprint and make it easier to act on sustainability goals with confidence.
Why getting it right matters:
| For Industry | For Consumers |
| Reliable ESG data helps financial institutions understand their environmental risks, improve transparency, and strengthen relationships with regulators, investors, and customers. | It offers the clarity and confidence to make more informed choices, and helps protect against “greenwashing”, where sustainability claims don’t match reality. |
FRIL’s approach: Collaboration in Action
FRIL’s Shaping the Future of ESG in Financial Services Innovation Call brought together fintech innovators, global banks, regulators, and academic experts to explore how technology and data could simplify sustainability reporting and drive meaningful change.
Rather than working in silos, participants collaborated in a shared space for experimentation, testing ideas, sharing expertise, and co-developing solutions with real world impact.
FRIL supported successful innovators like CienDos with early-stage funding and direct access to senior decision-makers in major financial institutions. This combination of support and exposure helped companies rapidly test, validate, and refine their ideas, moving from concept to implementation faster than ever.
The Case Study – CienDos
Glasgow-based environmental data and analytics company, CienDos helps financial services institutions understand the environmental impact of their investments.
The team were a winner of the Innovation Call in 2024. As a result of taking part, CienDos has expanded their Glasgow team, as well as accelerated the development of their Financed Emissions Calculator™, which has now been launched in market with Equifax.
“As a result of the products we created through FRIL, we’ve moved into a revenue generating stage of the business, and have customers across Europe”. — Julia Salmond, CEO and co-founder of The Company.
Working in partnership with FRIL and strategic collaborators, CienDos built confidence amongst buyers and partners that their product would address real industry needs.
The team at CienDos worked directly with HSBC, Virgin Money and Equifax in order to develop both their finance emissions calculator ™ and Sustainable Transition Plan, which allows institutions to benchmark and monitor progress on their actions on sustainability.
“We were drawn to FRIL by the combination of funding opportunity and direct access to the buying power of the banks. We had direct access to test new products with potential buyers, and alongside that – an injection of capital as well”. — says Jules.
CienDos stats
| Sector | Fintech |
| Employees | 9 |
| Location | Glasgow / London |
The Ambition: Growth and Vision
CienDos is led by serial entrepreneurs and has a track record of intentionally building businesses in Glasgow. This commitment remains central to the company’s ethos, and collaboration with FRIL has helped it create local jobs and internships while scaling globally.
“I’m a graduate of the University of Strathclyde, and I had to go elsewhere to gain opportunities. At my stage in my career, it’s important to come back and create those types of career opportunities here in Glasgow. That’s absolutely critical to what we do as a business”. — says Jules.
The partnership with FRIL has enabled CienDos to take on two new FTE posts. The team have also taken on two interns over the summer, which they wouldn’t have been able to do without the new posts and customers acquired through the collaboration with FRIL.
“Ultimately, we are an international business, but we are headquartered in Glasgow, and we will remain headquartered in Glasgow”. — adds Jules.
The Outcome: Turning Ambition Into Action
Through FRIL, CienDos didn’t just develop new tools, it built a stronger foundation for growth. The programme helped the company expand its reach, solidify its reputation, and prove that innovation and sustainability can thrive together.
For FRIL, it was another step in showing how collaboration can drive meaningful change, connecting bright ideas with the people and partners who can make them real. Because when technology meets purpose, finance becomes a force for good, and cities like Glasgow lead the way.
“I think what’s really key about FRIL is that it is backed by real money. It’s not just a talking shop. It’s backed by real professionals that understand that getting money from the public purse is challenging for a SME or start-up”. — says Jules.
Impact summary
- New commercial relationships and expanded global network achieved.
- Development of Financed Emissions Calculator ™ which has been launched into the
- market with Equifax.
- Development of Sustainable Transition Plan.
- Two full-time jobs and two internships.
- Strategic partnerships with global organisations including Equifax established.
- International market expansion in UK, Europe and Asia achieved.
“FRIL really builds an environment of trust, with so much professional support in the background that made it completely different from anything else we’ve done before”. — concludes Jules.
About FRIL
FRIL is part of the larger Glasgow City Region Innovation Accelerator programme with Glasgow, one of three pilot regions’ – including West Midlands – sharing a £100m investment aimed at transforming R&D within the UK. Led by Innovate UK, this programme supports the UK Government’s levelling-up agenda by empowering local regions to drive economic growth through innovation. This approach not only supports regional development but also positions the UK as a leader in the global innovation landscape.
Download the CienDos case study.
Future-Ready Skills in Financial Regulation: AI, RegTech and ESG Leadership
Alessio Azzutti, John Finch and Xiang Li, of the University of Glasgow, introduce two new professional courses for our FinTech, Financial Services and Financial Regulation communities, introduced as part of the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab project. Please do follow up with us by alessio.azzutti@glasgow.ac.uk, john.finch@glasgow.ac.uk, or xiang.li@glasgow.ac.uk
In today’s fast-changing and increasingly complex regulatory landscape, financial institutions face mounting challenges: rising compliance costs, increasingly sophisticated financial crime, outdated technological capabilities, and growing sustainability demands/pressures from stakeholders and activists. Faced with these pressures, professionals need to reskill and upskill, in particular in areas of AI, RegTech, and ESG leadership, to thrive and remain competitive.
About the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL)
As part of the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL), we are committed to promoting the flourishing of human capital, particularly deepening the expertise in financial regulation among financial services, fintechs and regulators. We aim to make our university’s educational offering easily accessible and directly relevant to industry professionals to support both career and organisational development. Aspiring to excellence in what we do, we introduce learner-centred active learning approaches and incorporate real-life challenges into our teaching that help our course participants address the challenges they experience at work and develop and implement appropriate solutions.
Our FRIL team at the University of Glasgow has spent two and a half years living and breathing financial regulation innovation alongside our colleagues in financial services, fintech and regulation. The FRIL project involves us all in co-developing and collaborating on action research, knowledge exchange, and innovation calls, and our skills development theme, professional education courses, presented as short micro-credentials. By drawing together our insights from the FRIL project together with our expertise in research and learning and teaching in the University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School and School of Law, we have developed two professional education courses in ‘AI, RegTech and Financial Compliance’ and ‘ESG Leadership’.
Our Learning Design Approach
Experiential and active learning inform our course design and approach to learning. This approach has been proven impactful in leadership, entrepreneurial, and professional education. It draws on wide-ranging experiences of working professionals in roles connected with the courses, across careers, supports participants in applying concepts and tools introduced in the course to workplaces, and facilitates reflections and discussions among participants through practical cases and in-course exercises.
The focus of the course content is informed by leading industry professionals involved in the action research and innovation calls, thereby ensuring close alignment with industry demands. Alongside expert-led lectures and interviews, participants immerse themselves in interactive activities—from tackling real-world compliance scenarios and innovation challenges to collaborative problem-solving with peers. This ensures learners move beyond concepts into the skills and confidence to navigate the complex intersection of financial regulation, compliance demands, sustainability, and AI solutions.
Course 1: AI, RegTech and Financial Compliance
Led by: Alessio Azzutti and Ian MacNeil
Context
With exploding regulatory requirements, rising costs, increasingly sophisticated financial crime, outdated systems, and shifting consumer expectations, financial compliance is becoming ever more demanding for regulated institutions. This urgent need for both business and technological innovation is driving the rise of Regulatory Technology (RegTech)—and particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI)—which is transforming how organisations respond. Lasting success, however, depends not only on innovative technology but also on professionals equipped to harness it.
Course details
This course progresses from AI and RegTech foundations to real-world applications, governance, emerging regulations, and future-ready compliance strategies. Assessment is fully practice-based: instead of traditional exams or theoretical essays, learners will complete a Capstone Project where they design an AI-enabled compliance solution, analyse its risks and governance, and map a personalised professional development pathway.
If you’re interested in this course, please email Alessio Azzutti at Alessio.Azzutti@glasgow.ac.uk.
Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Critically analyse and evaluate AI applications in financial compliance contexts.
- Design theory-informed, effective, responsible, and future-ready solutions.
- Position themselves as compliance professionals prepared to lead digital transformation in banking, finance, FinTech, consultancy, and regulatory bodies.
Course 2: ESG Leadership
Led by: Erika Anderson, John Finch and Xiang Li
Context
Complex and dynamic regulation remains a feature of sustainability and ESG reporting, with notable differences across regions and jurisdictions. Given the long-lived qualities of reputation, product and process, and the global reach of supply chains, investors, consumers, and business customers want to know about an organisation’s sustainability offer and profile. We focus on that point of transition—from compliance to strategy and leadership—highlighting the strategic approach to leveraging ESG insights to achieve both the organisation’s competitive advantage and reduction of material risks embedded in sustainability.
Course details
This course covers the regulatory framework and its implications for organisations and their supply chains, including sustainability reporting and disclosures as these address risk management and inform investment and investor stewardship. From reporting to transition, the course highlights the critical roles of strategic development, leadership and organisational change. We draw on case studies, short lectures, interviews with the community of practice, evaluations of current sustainability plans, and discussions among participants and our teaching team to facilitate participants’ learning.
Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Evaluate an organisation’s sustainability performance from multiple perspectives.
- Develop a comprehensive ESG/sustainability plan, integrating compliance with business strategy.
- Lead organisational change by embedding ESG considerations into leadership and strategy.
Practical Information
- AI, RegTech and Financial Compliance course: to be delivered in-person at the University of Glasgow between 16 October and 27 November 2025.
- ESG Leadership course: to be delivered online in six weekly modules from late September 2025, with an option for participants to complete the assessment and claim 10 credits at the postgraduate level, which are recognised by the University of Glasgow.
- Both courses will also be available online in early 2026.
- Participants from both courses can receive a certificate of participation
Future-Proof Your Expertise
Whether your focus is mastering AI-enabled compliance or leading ESG transformation, these short courses will position you at the forefront of professional development. Join us to upskill/reskill, strengthen your expertise, prepare for your organisation’s transition, and lead confidently in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.
Supply Chain Intelligence: Actionable Risk Assessment of Brazilian Commodity Supply Chains Using Geospatial Data
Geospatial data is transforming sustainability risk assessment in Financial Services. Driven by mandatory regulations such as the EU’s CSRD and SFDR, alongside emerging standards such as TNFD, financial institutions must now monitor not just financial performance, but real-world environmental and social impacts across global supply chains.
This white paper showcases how geospatial data and asset-level geospatial analysis can be used as a support tool for supply chain impact monitoring. Specifically, we evaluate deforestation risks in Brazilian commodity supply chains. Using publicly available datasets and Google Earth Engine, we develop a reproducible risk scoring framework, applied to over 17,000 slaughterhouse facilities, tied to 9,854 companies, across Brazil.
This analysis:
- Quantifies deforestation exposure across 12 animal-based commodities at facility and company level.
- Creates actionable risk metrics for investors, lenders, and regulators.
- Aligns outputs with ESG disclosure frameworks, including CSRD, SFDR, TNFD, and the EUDR.
- Highlights high-risk companies and regions, providing clear signals for due diligence and sustainable finance strategy.
This paper is part of a broader move toward Earth Intelligent Finance, empowering financial actors to make faster, smarter, and more transparent sustainability decisions using geospatial insight.
Celebrating Scotland’s FinTech Champions
On Wednesday evening, the Scottish FinTech Awards returned to Edinburgh, bringing together the Scottish fintech cluster for a night of recognition, networking, and inspiration. The awards, organised by Digit and held as part of the Scotland FinTech Festival and hosted at the EICC recognised organisations and individuals pushing the frontier of financial innovation in Scotland.
The breadth of categories underscores how far fintech in Scotland has matured, from climate impact and digital transformation to partnership models, RegTech, and AI/data usage. This year saw a threefold increase in terms of entries which reinforces the claim to being a meaningful a leading fintech cluster, alive, competitive, and attracting global attention.
In the last 12 months the FinTech Scotland cluster recorded 8 % year-on-year employment growth in 2024 and 11,300 people are now working in fintech across Scotland.
The winners
- FinTech of the Year: Loveelectric
- Climate & Environmental Impact: CienDos
- Best Start Up / New Entrant: Finspector
- Best Use of Data / AI: Aveni
- Digital Transformation: GoCodeGreen
- Financial Services Innovation: Mylo (Aegon)
- Financial Technology Partner: Snugg
- Outstanding Leader: David Ferguson (Seccl)
- Social Impact: Stellar Omada
- Special Recognition: Adam Betteridge (TSB)
- Evangelist: Sheetal Dash (Barclays)
- Best Fintech Collaboration: Level E Research & Aberdeen
Best RegTech Innovation of the year
At FinTech Scotland, we were particularly proud to see the RegTech Innovation award go to the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL). It’s not just a win for FinTech Scotland but for the whole cluster as demonstrated by the diversity of people on stage to collect the awards from fintechs to established financial firms, from universities to FinTech Scotland colleagues.
The award is an affirmation of the vision behind FRIL and the collaborative approach we believe is essential to the future of regulation, compliance and consumer outcomes in financial services.
EarthTrace
FinTech Scotland Festival: Accelerating Regional Fintech Innovation
The eighth annual FinTech Scotland Festival will take place between the 22nd and the 26th of September 2025, showcasing the innovation of the Scottish fintech cluster.
Bringing together entrepreneurs, policymakers, global financial leaders, investors and innovators to demonstrate how the Scottish fintech cluster is translating the UK Government Modern Industrial Strategy into tangible economic growth, jobs and attracting the capital to scale enterprises in the UK and globally.
Across five days the festival will showcase fintech businesses and FinTech Scotland’s strategic partners who are fostering economic growth by driving innovation in Financial Regulation, Open Finance, Payments, Climate Finance utilising expertise Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Ledger Technologies and Quantum.
The festival highlights how the fintech cluster is aligned behind the new UK Government Financial Services Strategy unveiled on Tuesday, 15 July by demonstrating productivity improvement through digital innovation, the role of regional cluster leadership and supporting the national payment vision.
FinTech Scotland has built a week with key events including a Global Fintech Forum for international visitors, the Annual Fintech Summit on fintech trends, an awards ceremony to recognise fintech excellence and a day of workshops and knowledge sharing to support the growth of fintechs in Scotland
Nicola Anderson, CEO, FinTech Scotland, said:
“The FinTech Scotland Festival supports the UK Government’s ambition to make the UK, the world’s fintech capital. It will demonstrate how regional clusters can deliver jobs, inward investments, exports and societal benefit. I’m looking forward to welcoming individuals and organisations from around the UK and beyond to develop new connections and collaboration opportunities.”
Discover the festival agenda at www.fintechscotland.com/events/
Live podcast episode from Money20/20
A conversation live from Money20/20 2025 in Amsterdam with 4 fintech businesses, part of a Scottish delegation that saw 10 fintechs exhibiting at Europe’s largest fintech conference led by Scottish Development International and FinTech Scotland.
Dan from CreditNature, David from BigSpark, Jamie from Aveni and Michael from Transwap offer their views on the conversations they’ve had, the speakers they’ve listened to and reflect on the impact that Money20/20 can have for their business.
Turning the Tide: How SensFish Is Powering Better Maritime Investment and ESG Decisions
Financial institutions are sharpening their focus on climate risk, ESG disclosures, and sustainable investment. At the same time supply chains, shipping emissions and biodiversity-linked investment products, are increasingly on the balance sheet but reliable, decision-ready data has been hard to come by.
The Challenge: Ocean Impact, Low Visibility
Financial stakeholders are under pressure to assess the environmental impact and transition readiness of companies operating in ocean-related sectors. Yet data on maritime carbon emissions, biodiversity, and regulatory compliance remains fragmented, inconsistent, or inaccessible, making it difficult to price risk accurately, validate sustainability claims, or identify new opportunities.
The Solution: Ocean Intelligence for Finance
SensFish delivers a scenario-led analytics platform that turns open, maritime-specific data into actionable intelligence. The solution integrates historical, real-time, and predictive datasets such as satellite tracking, vessel surveillance, and ecosystem modelling. By doing so, SensFish enables users to:
- Quantify and forecast carbon impact across maritime supply chains (including sequestration potential and emissions),
- Verify compliance with sustainability standards (e.g. reducing IUU fishing via vessel monitoring),
- Support biodiversity-linked investments through monitoring of wild fish stocks and aquaculture patterns,
- De-risk projects by modelling scenarios for ESG outcomes, operational constraints, and regulatory exposure.
All this is delivered in a user-friendly platform that simplifies complex data and aligns with global Net Zero and ocean disclosure frameworks, turning compliance into strategy and reporting into opportunity.
SensFish’s traction is growing. In the past year, the company has:
- Been selected for the European Space Agency Business Incubation Programme,
- Partnered with UNCTAD and presented at the Monaco Ocean Finance Forum, part of the UN Ocean Conference,
- Joined the Innovate UK InvestAbility programme and Converge Net Zero cohort,
- Secured support from Glasgow City Council and received international investor interest,
- Onboarded a publicly listed UK client with global operations.
These milestones reflect a rising demand for deeper ocean intelligence among forward-looking financial institutions and corporates alike.
Discover more about SensFish
Large Language Model Application for Regulatory Horizon Scanning: Case Study on ESG Greenwashing Regulations
This white paper explores the application of Generative AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), to enhance regulatory horizon scanning within financial services. Using the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) 2024 anti-greenwashing rule as a case study, we demonstrate how LLMs can be integrated into the strategic foresight process to detect early regulatory signals, analyse stakeholder feedback, and forecast future regulatory developments.
Our framework builds upon the traditional horizon scanning model, comprising exploration, assessment, application, and continuation, and incorporates advanced text analysis techniques including semantic similarity testing with models such as BERT and RoBERTa.
The study shows that LLMs can significantly improve the efficiency, accuracy, and scalability of horizon scanning by extracting meaningful insights from large, unstructured datasets. The results highlight the potential of LLM-driven foresight to enhance regulatory preparedness, guide compliance strategies, and inform policy design in an increasingly complex and dynamic regulatory environment.
Sustainable Financial Products and UK Pension Schemes
Sustainable financial products have gained significant traction in the financial world as climate change and social responsibility concerns continue to dominate public discourse. In the UK, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and sustainability considerations have been steadily gaining attention as both financial product designs and risk management tools.
Economic trends, regulations, and soft laws have been reactive over the last decade to growing transparency and demands for accountability (Palea, 20221; Escrig-Olmedo, Muñoz-Torres, Fernandez-Izquierdo, 20132).
This paper explores the growing role of sustainable financial products in the UK’s Defined Contribution (DC) pension schemes. It highlights key challenges and opportunities, focusing on the interplay between sustainable investment products, pension dashboards, Fintech, and institutional perspectives.