In terms of its environmental responsibility, Crédito y Caución designs its processes with the aim of minimising the waste generated by the Company's operations while optimising energy consumption.
The major environmental impact of its economic operations focuses on industrial companies, the activities of which involve the transformation of a raw material into a finished product, generating waste over the course of the process. Crédito y Caución's value proposal clearly does not involve tangible raw materials, but rather vast volumes of data which, when properly administered, generate useful knowledge which assists our insureds in their commercial decision-making. The process is not, however, 100% clean: it can potentially generate tonnes of paper.
Credit insurance is based on network effects requiring an intense two-way exchange of information between the insured persons and the Company. In 2010, this process generated 8.5 million documents, although only 33% were ever printed on paper. The fact that the remainder employed an electronic format meant paper savings equivalent to woodland of more than 500 trees. To print them it would have taken 13,400 boxes of A4 paper, with a total weight of 32.3 tonnes, and which, piled one on top of another would have made a stack 3,421 metres high.
Over the course of the last 25 years Crédito y Caución has focused substantial efforts on minimising the need for a hard copy in this document exchange, working towards a paperless system. The first step came in 1993, when Crédito y Caución became the first credit insurance company in the world to implement an online service, known as cycred, which allows insureds to manage all processes tied to the risk cycle. In 2010, insureds sent the Company 4.6 million documents, 63% of which required no hard copy.
The paperless response cycle could not be fully completed until 2004, when Crédito y Caución became the first Spanish company to apply for an electronic signature from the Spanish National Mint in order to include cryptographic procedures within its online services. The system identifies the Company with full legal guarantees as the sender of the electronic documents it dispatches to its customers in place of the hard copies traditionally used in the administration of credit insurance. The distribution of electronic documents is more secure and confidential and they are received instantaneously, thereby saving Crédito y Caución's customers time when closing deals in a globalised context. It also avoids the use of paper: in 2010 the Company sent its insureds 3.8 million documents, 70% of which required no hard copy.
After almost 25 years in existence, 98% of insureds, practically the entire total, are registered to use cycred for their communications with the Company. The use of electronic signatures, being a more recent innovation, covers only 53% of insureds. Crédito y Caución's efforts in this field focus on extending the use of electronic documentation in order to rationalise paper consumption.
Presentation
Government Contract
