Echo Impact Exchange is going live – to change impact rating for good!
Added: (Wed Apr 27 2022)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
Echo, the world's first platform for impact rating by the crowd, is going online on April 28th 2022. Echo Impact Exchange is a market-based rating platform to rate the non-financial performance of companies. Put differently: a decentralized impact rating agency. For the first time since the advent of impact finance, there will be a transparent, inclusive and real-time approach to impact measurement.
It’s high time: there is an enormous demand for impact-oriented investment opportunities. However - until now the market has offered products that rely on largely intransparent, non-standardized ESG ratings or are subject to extensive greenwashing. Echo now combines state-of-the-art technology with positive social & ecological impact - and brings impact rating into the public sphere.
The founders behind Echo Impact Exchange are Dr. René Boucsein and Dr. Dr. Carl David Mildenberger, who met almost 20 years ago at St. Gallen University, Switzerland. Carl, who holds two PhDs in economics and philosophy respectively, has spent the last 15 years doing research at the intersection of markets and morality. Echo Impact Exchange was born out of his discontent with the way impact is currently being assessed in the world of impact finance and ESG finance. Together with René, who spent the last decade working in a family business, he decided to do something about this.
Echo - the key facts
Public Beta launching on April 28th 2022
Echo creates a way for impact ratings of private companies to be public, transparent, realtime and easily comparable
It does so by providing company-specific impact certificates (immies) as a tradable commodity. Its immy-price on Echo Impact Exchange functions as a company’s impact indicator. Higher price = better impact
The Echo token will be used to trade immies on Echo Impact Exchange. Echoes will become exchangeable for other currencies in 2023.
Echo is a place to learn about impact and foster critical thinking and discussions. It therefore hosts a forum for its user base and will provide learning materials about impact.
Echo focuses on full transparency and invites users to create along with them.
The founding team strongly believes in entrepreneurship as a means to have a positive impact on the world
How does impact rating work on an Impact Exchange?
Echo’s users trade impact certificates – 'immies'. The price of these immies reflects the ecological, social and ethical performance of a company – its impact. Users who expect a company's impact to rise will buy that company’s immies. Those who expect a falling impact will sell or short-sell that company’s immies. Thus, the price of a company’s immies traces the (expected) rise or fall of that company’s impact. Like this, we achieve a market-based impact rating of companies. On Echo, you rate by trading: you buy the good stuff and sell the baddies.
Why does this matter?
Today, we know a lot less about the ecological, social and ethical performance of a company than about its financial situation. Echo aims to change this – the chart of the immy price now indicates which company has a positive impact and which one has not.
This is crucial information for everybody: Companies do not only create revenues and profit. They also use and consume natural resources. And they affect the society they do business in both with their products (e.g. weapons, contraceptives) and their business practices. And companies act in morally praise- or blameworthy ways (e.g. with respect to child labour).
About the founders
Dr. René Boucsein (University of St.Gallen, SciencesPo Paris) holds a PhD in political economy. After 10+ years experience in family business, he now chairs Echo’s daily business.
Dr. Dr. Carl David Mildenberger, (Universities of St. Gallen, Witten-Herdecke and St Andrews) holds PhDs in both economics and philosophy. He is an internationally leading researcher in moral market design and responsible for Echo’s centerpiece: a well-functioning market.
More information
- A short explanatory video about Echo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flrec2bA1Dk&utm_source=press+release&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=launch
- A collection of explanatory articles: https://echo-exchange.com/blog?utm_source=press+release&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=launch