A bank financing a transport or logistics company typically asks for three things: fuel consumption of your own vehicle fleet, the composition of that fleet (number of vehicles, fuel type, year of manufacture) and an estimate of transport outsourced to subcontractors. This is no coincidence — for a transport company, virtually all CO2 emissions fall into those three categories, and banks must themselves report on emissions linked to their credit portfolio.
Most of this data is already in your administration. Fuel receipts, fuel card statements, lease contracts and invoices from subcontractors are precisely the documents a bank asks for. The work lies mainly in gathering and correctly translating figures, not in collecting something new.
Why the bank looks specifically at fuel and vehicle fleet
Banks fall under their own rules for climate reporting on their lending portfolio. To know how much emissions are linked to a loan to your company, they need a figure that aligns with what your sector actually emits. For a transport company, that is virtually by definition fuel: diesel, petrol, LNG or electricity for the vehicle fleet. For an office organisation, the bank would sooner look at energy consumption of the building; for transport it is about the road.
That is why a financier usually does not ask for the same broad list as a large buyer applying the CSRD supply chain provision. That provision limits what a reporting obligation company may demand from a smaller supplier, and is written for the relationship between a buyer and its chain. A bank is not a buyer in that sense and has its own framework, which means a financier's question list can be broader in parts than what the VSME standard names as maximum. Read more about that boundary between what may and may not be asked in the overview of topics per situation.
Own vehicle fleet: fuel receipts and fuel cards
For own lorries, vans and company cars, the most requested set of figures is annual fuel consumption, broken down by fuel type. Fuel card statements from the supplier often already provide that in litres per month. Those with own refuelling stations can obtain the same figures from fuel receipts. For electric or hybrid vehicles, this is supplemented by charging consumption, usually found on the energy bill or in a charging card statement.
The conversion from litres to a CO2 figure is done with an emission factor: a fixed ratio between fuel consumption and emissions, established with a reference date. These factors change from time to time, and which version was used should remain traceable — also for a next conversation with the bank or another buyer.
Outsourced transport: the most difficult category
Transport outsourced to subcontractors falls in most reporting frameworks under a different category than the own vehicle fleet: it is not about emissions from own vehicles, but about emissions arising elsewhere in the chain due to work being done on your behalf. This is usually the most difficult set of figures, because you do not always have direct access to the fuel data of that subcontractor.
A bank rarely asks for an exact figure here. More often it is about a reasonable estimate: how many trips are outsourced, to how many transport operators, and whether those operators themselves already report anything. Invoices from subcontractors, transport agreements and any sustainability statements from those parties are the starting point for this.
What a bank usually does not ask
A financier typically does not request the same level of detail as an audit or a value chain-wide life cycle assessment. For SMEs, there is also no recognised body for this — not at esgia.eu, and not at any other provider. What a bank wants to see is a substantiated, traceable figure, not an externally certified report. Moreover, a bank's questionnaire varies by financier: some ask only upon application for new financing, others annually for existing credits.
How you build and maintain this dossier
Because fuel consumption, vehicle fleet and outsourced transport recur annually — with the bank, but often also with an insurer or a major buyer — it is worthwhile to document the underlying documents and choices made once, properly. At esgia.eu you build that dossier from the documents you already have, and it remains in place so that the next questionnaire is not a new search. How that build-up works exactly and where the figures come from is explained on the methodology page.
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