The ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) movement may be drawing snickers from some corners of the investing world. But in places like Singapore, the drive to build a more sustainable, equitable, and accountable world for investors and users of financial services, is picking up steam.
This week, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced the launch of its ESG Hub. The Hub is dedicated to supporting collaboration between fintechs, financial institutions, and other industry participants. With 15 ESG fintechs and organizations already on board, the new hub will serve as an anchor for a variety of sustainability initiatives including the Point Carbon Zero Program and KPMG’s ESG Business Foundry.
The Hub will also facilitate MAS’ Project Greenprint, a set of initiatives launched in 2020 to help the financial industry obtain “quality, consistent, and granular data” on sustainability. The project includes a common disclosure portal to simplify the ESG disclosure process; a data orchestrator to aggregate sustainability data from multiple sources such as ESG data providers, utilities providers, and others; a ESG registry to record and manage ESG certifications; and a marketplace to help green technology providers in Singapore connect with investors, venture capital firms, and financial institutions to foster partnerships and innovations in green technology.
“The establishment of the ESG Impact Hub is a critical milestone in Project Greenprint’s journey to build a vibrant and robust ecosystem in Singapore, underpinned by technology and data,” MAS Chief Sustainability Officer Darian McBain said. “This physical Hub will augment MAS’ plans to launch a digital Greenprint Marketplace next year to catalyze the growth of the region’s online ESG community; and will serve as the launchpad for public-private partnerships that support Asia’s just and sustainable transition to a low carbon economy.”
MAS’ ESG hub will look to build Singapore’s ESG ecosystem in three ways: helping corporations and financial institutions meet their ESG needs via the “discovery, scaling, and deployment” of new green technical solutions; partnering with knowledge leaders, investors, and financial institutions to organize and launch ESG accelerator programs, workshops and other initiatives; and supporting ESG stakeholders by directing the community’s “programs and solutions toward “material, quantifiable impacts.”
As of October 4, the members of MAS’ ESG Impact Hub include:
- Acre Resources
- CDP
- Climate Impact X
- Circulate Capital
- Eachmile Technologies
- Equilibriuim AI
- GDST (Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability)
- Grow Asia
- KPMG
- MUFG BAnk
- STACS
- Stonehaven
- Terrascope
- The Nature Conservancy
- World Wide Generation (WWG)
Elsewhere in the Singapore fintech ecosystem, customer intelligence and risk assessment firm Bizbaz recently secured $4 million in seed funding. The round was led by HSBC Asset Management, and featured participation from Vynn Capital and SOSV.
Bizbaz offers banks, fintechs, and other businesses the ability to leverage data to acquire new, unbanked and underbanked customers, reduce risk and cost-associated risk, and create revenues from upselling new financial products to existing customers. Founded in 2019, the Singapore-based company offers a range of financial intelligence solutions including alternative credit scoring, fraud detection, eKYC, and product aggregation and recommendation systems.
Bizbaz does business in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand, Africa, and Latin America, as well as its home market of Singapore. The company notes that more than seven out of ten Southeast Asia’s 680 million population are unbanked and have no credit history. At the same time, Bizbaz recognizes that mobile phone penetration rates of 69% give the startup the opportunity to leverage social data, along with financial data, to develop risk profiles for thin or no-file individuals.
“Most financial institutions and financial technology companies still use outdated financial history based credit risk systems,” Bizbaz CEO Hayk Hakobyan said. “Our solutions analyze all financial and non-financial data, which have meaningful impact on risk assessment for loans, insurance and other financial services.”
Bizbaz includes insurtechs eBaoTech and Aktivo, Philippine credit bureau CIBI, and digital identity and programmable communications firm Telesign among its partners. This spring, the company announced a collaboration with Australia-based Advanced Human Imaging Limited.
HSBC Asset Management is the investment division of U.K.-based HSBC Group. The firm’s investment in Bizbaz comes a little over a year after launching a new venture capital investment strategy designed to gi give customers more exposure to innovative fintechs. The Greater Bay Area in China was among the markets highlighted when the fund was announced late last summer.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Central and Eastern Europe
- Munich-based AML Surveillance technology company Hawk AI announced a strategic partnership with Know Your Customer.
- Latvian open banking data platform Nordigen teamed up with Italian cash flow management solution provider Pelrio.
- Germany’s ADAC Finanzdienste partnered with Solarisbank to launch new credit card offering.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Central and Southern Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
Asia-Pacific
Sub-Saharan Africa
Photo by Elina Sazonov