A business graduate’s bid to make banking greener

Julia Ménayas followed a perfectly-trodden route out of organization university, becoming an affiliate in a undertaking cash company. But in March 2020, just as she listened to about “something named Covid”, she quit to established up a banking expert services enterprise concentrating on sustainability.

Launching Helios was an bold transfer by the 27-year-aged Parisian, who only graduated from her masters in management (MiM) at HEC Paris in 2018. For the first 4 months, the organization comprised just Ménayas and her co-founder, Maeva Courtois, operating from Courtois’ kitchen, observed by the cat.

But Ménayas was pushed by the desire to go after a career that would be about producing social price, fairly than simply building a financial gain — an outlook that came in component from her time at organization university.

When she begun at HEC Paris, she felt like one of the “lucky ones”, and the program taught her to switch that into a sense of social responsibility.

By her do the job expertise — which include at start-ups as perfectly as in undertaking cash and consulting — she was drawn to the engineering sector. But tech did not fulfill her desire to generate social price. She describes the marketplace as “very weird”, and although there is substantial social responsibility as an trader — choosing which industries and organizations will thrive, what new work opportunities will be created and supporting to condition the broader economic direction — “somehow we had been not owning it at all”, she states.

So Ménayas returned to what she was taught on her MiM. “Leaving a VC — with really great existence earnings — was tricky,” she states. “But when it did not make sense in conditions of [social] responsibility, I remembered what I experienced been taught on the MiM and how we experienced to believe not about wage but the price we could convey,” she states.

Helios, which presents its expert services in partnership with German banking computer software enterprise Solaris, is someplace “between an NGO [non-governmental organisation] in conditions of aspiration and purpose” and a organization “because we have to be sustainable somehow”, states Ménayas.

Buyers pay a price to open an account and Helios pledges in no way to commit their deposits in industries that contribute to the local climate disaster or harm biodiversity. “We do really the opposite,” Ménayas states. “We only immediate our funding in the direction of industries similar to the ecological transition.” Symbolically, the first bank cards are produced of cherrywood sourced from sustainable forests in Europe.

A different intention of Helios is to increase awareness among shoppers about in which banking companies commit their deposits. When people take into account world-wide warming, Ménayas states, they are likely to believe of the influence of the automotive or aviation industries, but couple glance at which organizations banking companies fund making use of customers’ cash.

“The banking marketplace transforms people’s deposits into lengthy-expression investments in the real financial system and, by choosing to finance industries like coal-fired electric power or gas extraction, [banking companies] in fact have a large amount of responsibility in regards to our long term,” she argues.

Setting up to hear ahead of in fact main was a really great career lesson

Ménayas credits organization university with opening up opportunities and inspiring her to be bolder. Together with accessibility to a community of start-ups, VCs and business owners, HEC Paris promoted a “learn to dare” ethos that she states she appreciated. “The university opens up your mind to developing a little something and not fearing the mysterious,” Ménayas states. “That was a great starting stage to leave conventional marketplace driving and start a little something additional adventurous.”

In fact, her guidance to future MiM pupils — alongside staying curious and open to having classes in a variety of subjects beyond finance — is to devote a third of their time in the classroom and two-thirds chatting to classmates, lecturers and speakers.

Tapping into this community gave Ménayas the self-assurance and frame of mind to look for support when she demands it — a little something that is proving critical as an entrepreneur. “Being uncovered to really various existence stories was a great lesson since I felt it was Ok for me to arrive at out to any person,” she states. “At Helios we have to make a little something from scratch, so we have to collect a large amount of talent, associates, investors and shoppers, and be able to arrive at out to any person for assistance, guidance or sources.”

The MiM furnished a lesson in additional everyday competencies, these kinds of as listening. There are loads of major egos at organization university, states Ménayas — a little something that was specified small shrift at the army camp to which pupils had been despatched to master about teamwork. “The troopers advised us, ‘You are likely to master how to shut up’,” she recollects.

Ménayas states she learnt to hear to others in the group, as perfectly as to leaders. “As a supervisor and co-founder now, I believe I primarily hear. Setting up to hear ahead of in fact main was a really great career lesson.”

The university opens up your mind to developing a little something and not fearing the mysterious

The expertise of teamwork that the MiM furnished has also been invaluable. “Today, our undertaking is all about developing the finest crew, one that is a hundred for each cent aligned with our goal but also qualified to deliver tangible effects,” she states. “The group do the job, which was really extreme on the MiM, was really great teaching for that.”

Helios is off to a good start. The first round of fundraising introduced in €1.5m and its 3,500 users across France, Belgium and Luxembourg have so considerably deposited €8m in existing accounts, which price tag €6 for each month to open. But the organization is younger and there are issues ahead, these kinds of as recruitment, product or service, acquisition and increasing awareness among shoppers about how banking companies use their cash.

But Ménayas stays characteristically bold: in 5 decades she would like Helios to use a hundred-200 people and “be substantially additional political than we are now”. Like the new banking companies that begun up all through the industry’s electronic revolution, Helios is on the “verge” of bringing a “sustainable revolution of banking”, Ménayas states, “proving that we can do issues otherwise, that we can make a clear and sustainable model and, hopefully, paving the way for the banking marketplace to change additional radically and faster”.