The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Wednesday launched the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) Impact Hub (the Hub) to spur co-location and collaboration between ESG FinTech start-ups and solution providers, financial institutions and real economy stakeholders.

MAS said in a statement the hub will also anchor industry-driven sustainability initiatives such the Point Carbon Zero Program, a program launched by MAS and Google Cloud to drive the innovation, incubation and scaling of climate FinTech solutions in Asia, and KPMG’s ESG Business Foundry, a six-month accelerator program specially designed for scaling ESG FinTechs.

Located at The Great Room at Afro-AsiaAfro Asia, the launch was officiated by Ravi Menon, Managing Director of MAS.

The establishment of the hub seeks to capitalize on the strong industry interest in Project Greenprint, a collection of initiatives that aims to harness technology and data to enable a more transparent, trusted and efficient ESG ecosystem to enable green and sustainable finance.

The hub also aims to expedite the growth of Singapore’s ESG ecosystem on three fronts: growing ESG FinTechs; anchoring ESG enablers and supporting ESG stakeholders.

The hub will facilitate the discovery, scaling and deployment of technology solutions to address ESG needs of corporates and financial institutions, notably in terms of accurate measurement, reporting and verification of climate and sustainability data.

MAS will engage knowledge partners, financial institutions and investors to organise key ESG initiatives out of the Hub, such as ESG FinTech accelerator programs, training and capacity-building workshops, and thought leadership events.

MAS will engage the Hub community to deploy its program and solutions to drive material, quantifiable impacts that support sectoral transition efforts, with particular emphasis on the eight focus sectors identified by the Green Finance Industry Taskforce (GFIT).

At the time of launch, 15 ESG FinTechs and organizations are already set up at the hub.

MAS will continue to engage key stakeholders in building the Hub’s onsite community, and fostering partnerships to enhance financial sector access to high quality climate and sustainability data, to support more efficient deployment of capital towards green and sustainable projects.

“The establishment of the ESG Impact Hub is a critical milestone in Project Greenprint’s journey to build a vibrant and robust ESG ecosystem in Singapore, underpinned by technology and data,

“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,” said Darian McBain, Chief Sustainability Officer, MAS.

Sherie Ng, Country Director, Singapore and Malaysia, Google Cloud, said, “Having established a carbon neutral cloud platform that green fintechs are now using to build their innovative solutions, the next phase of the Point Carbon Zero Programme will involve mobilising the wider industry ecosystem to advance the adoption of these solutions.”

“In collaboration with MAS, KPMG, and leading financial institutions, we’ll be launching the inaugural Climate Finance Accelerator, which aims to channel capital toward green fintech companies and create opportunities for them to work closely with the rest of the industry to address challenges in areas like sustainability reporting, green credit scoring systems, and supply chain traceability. We very much look forward to running this Accelerator in partnership with the new ESG Impact Hub, a ‘living lab’ that we believe will help facilitate the collective action that’s needed to accelerate Asia’s transition to a carbon-free future,” she added.

Singapore’s Temasek allocates $3.64B for decarbonisation investment platform