S’pore joins STACS MAS to build blockchain-based ESG Registry – Wired PR Lifestyle Story

At the Singapore Fintech Festival last month, the Singapore Monetary Authority (MAS) announced that it will partner with industry to test four digital platforms. Greenprint project to meet the needs of the financial sector for good data on sustainability.

The Greenprint project was launched in December 2020 to promote a green financial ecosystem for innovation and technology, helping to mobilize capital, monitor sustainability commitments and help measure impact.

According to MAS, one of the challenges facing sustainability funding is the difficulty of accessing high-quality, consistent and accurate sustainability data.

To address these data gaps, financial institutions will be able to allocate capital to sustainability projects in a more scalable way to effectively monitor sustainability commitments and quantify the risks of their portfolios and real-world impact.

“Technology is a key driver for the financial industry to meet the challenges of the green transition and achieve zero net emissions,” said Sopnendu Mohanty, CEO of FinTech at MAS.

“Project Greenprint provides a functional digital infrastructure that combines new and existing environmental, social and governance (ESG) data across multiple platforms and industry solutions to facilitate reliable ESG data flows between the financial sector and the real economy, both in Singapore inside and around the world. ‘

Since the Greenprint project was announced, MAS has been involved in the financial industry and other industry sectors to identify potential digital enablers to address data challenges.

One of the four digital platforms currently being piloted is the Greenprint ESG Data and Certification Registry. This is being developed in collaboration with the local fintech company Hashstacs Pte Ltd (STACS) and is expected to be completed by the pilot in the second half of 2022.

What does the record do?

Blockchain-based registration will record and maintain the origin of ESG certificates issued by certification bodies in different sectors, as well as data and measurements verified by qualified third-party auditors.

This basically provides financial institutions, corporations, and regulatory authorities with a single point of access to this secure data and facilitates reliable data flows.

“It simply came to our notice then. So this ESG record will be able to provide data in one place, ”Benjamin Soh, managing director of STACS, explained at a virtual media roundtable held on Tuesday (December 1st).

“It will be an industry-wide library that will store ESG data and certificates. The overall goal is for organizations, financial investors, to continuously monitor their ESG commitments in order to mobilize investments more effectively. “

Benjamin noted that there is an existing problem with the problem of fragmented ESG data sets. Many different companies are on the path to sustainability, but they are all in very specific and fragmented industrial sectors.

The road to sustainability is therefore very tailored. Nowadays, it is very difficult to really understand the impact of a bank every time you make an investment or a loan. So what we want to do here with the ESG Registry is open a blockchain. [It will] it serves as a single source of truth, across multiple industrial sectors.

– Benjamin Soh, Managing Director of STACS

Through APIs, the ESG Registry can support a variety of integrations, such as assisting financial institutions with commercial financing and portfolio monitoring.

Financial institutions will have easier access to digitally processed data repository on sustainability projects in different industrial sectors.

As part of the blockchain, STACS has also expanded a number of different modules that are already integrated into different sectors. This will first and foremost help you receive and swallow ESG certificates from different sectors.

These certificates are the actual certificates issued by each sector. For example, there is the Green Mark of the Construction and Construction Authority (BCA) and Fair Trade for Agriculture. There are several certificates from different organizations, and the ones we want to include and internalize on the platform. That is, we digitize them.

– Benjamin Soh, Managing Director of STACS

Second, many of these sectors have different technologies. For example, they are using a variety of Internet Technology (IoT) data analytics — satellites, drones, etc. — to capture data from different industries.

With this in mind, STAC intends to collect and record some of this ongoing data in an aggregated manner.

“They are able to validate data on our platform for ESG scores or ESG ratings. In addition, they can retrieve data from our platform at any time as requested, to help better analyze portfolio scenarios,” he said.

Finally, STACS aims to be able to introduce a variety of industry standard protocols for reporting, such as terminology and taxonomies, so that users can improve their ESG reports in the financial sector.

The ESG Registry will essentially connect with various certification bodies and trusted industry platforms and will aim to protect the end-to-end traceability and transparency of entire business value chains. Further data aggregation of ESG data can be done, creating the potential for ongoing impact reporting and tracking.

The aim is to significantly improve the quality of available ESG data so that financial institutions can be more confident in mobilizing capital for ESG projects, such as sustainability-related financing, investment or insurance, and the trading of carbon credits.

The ESG Registration Platform aims to address two major issues in green finance: the lack of transparency and trust in ESG certificates and the inefficiency of accessing different industry standards and requirements in different industries, both nationally and globally.

MAS is pleased to work with Hashstacs to bring together different actors from different industries and sectors to provide, verify, verify and share data securely and efficiently to unlock green finance.

– Sopnendu Mohanty, CEO of FinTech at MAS

STACS sees a greater interest in collaboration

“STACS has been in business since 2019 and has been providing digitization and automation to blockchain-based technology for financial institutions. Over the past two years, we have been able to digitize many parts of our financial services process,” said Benjamin.

“Recently, we have been involved with financial institutions in the specific aspect of sustainable finance, which makes us excited because we want to help drive the future of sustainable finance.”

He has a deep specialization in providing financial DLT infrastructure for digitization in the financial sector. Its clients and partners include banks, stock exchanges, asset managers and corporations in various sectors. He acknowledged the importance of sustainability by focusing on the technological improvement and enabling of sustainable practices.

He also won the STACS 2020 MAS Global FinTech Innovation Challenge Awards under the theme Sustainability and Green Finance, and was awarded the FinTech ESG Best Solution (Asset & Wealth Management) at the DigFin Innovation Awards 2021.

The ESG Registry is in its beta phase, with modules and APIs ready to integrate, and will continue to improve in the coming months based on the collective contributions of industry partners.

According to STACS, it has received expressions of interest in studying cooperation with the ESG Registry from various financial institutions and organizations such as Aviva Singlife, Citi, OCBC Bank, UOB, SGTraDex and Surbana Jurong.

“It is gratifying to see more commitment in the field of green and sustainability through the growing demand from financial institutions to better control and measure green impacts,” Benjamin said.

“The efforts and synergies between DLT and other technologies / platforms will accelerate the achievement of a greener nation by serving many of the world’s leading financial institutions and empowering all institutions (financial and non-financial) to achieve greater commercial value in unlocking effective ESG strategies.”

Featured Image Credit: STACS / MAS