On Tuesday 20 August 2019, the Chamber was privileged to have key practitioners discuss Green Financing and how true sustainability could be achieved. The panel comprised of Mr Gregory Vandeler, APAC Head of Soft Commodities & TCF Coverage, ABN AMRO; Mr Dominic Godman, Partner, Head of Singapore, Arabesque; Mr Mark Tan, Managing Director, Head of Commodities Group, Asia Pacific, ING; and was moderated by Ms Lise Pretorius, Sustainable Finance Engagement Manager, WWF.

The panel discussion started by the practitioners sharing how different sectors perceive sustainability differently and how it cuts across all industry sectors. Mark and Gregory highlighted the need for financial institutions to enforce its monitoring and risk management systems in the loan assessment process. Businesses also play a large part in promoting environmentally responsible investments and projects via the increasing utilisation of technology and data analytics as noted by the panelists. Regulation and policy play an important role in supporting strategies that banks initiate to drive and support the (ESG) Environmental, Social and Governance projects undertaken by corporates. Governments need to look into ways such as financial schemes in supporting the change in mindset adopted by smaller companies. Perhaps the regulators need to set industry standards as currently different jurisdictions adopt different standards.

Block chain and data verification and accessibility will become a norm in the future according to panelist Dominic Godman of Arabesque. Not only will businesses move away from unsustainable practices and process in their supply chain, it will move downstream to the consumers as they too will be looking at supporting products that are of sustainable practices.

Many thanks to our panelists and moderator for taking time to engage with Chamber members on this timely and important topic to speed up Singapore’s movement towards circularity.