The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched a business hub in the heart of the city’s financial district with the aim of increasing collaboration between start-ups, financial institutions and other stakeholders focused on ESG.

The ESG Impact Hub will facilitate the building out of technology designed to address the ESG needs of corporates and financial institutions, particularly in terms of the accurate measurement, reporting and verification of climate and sustainability data.

MAS will also help organise other initiatives such as accelerator programmes and training workshops through the hub.

Located at the Great Room in the Afro-Asia building, there were already 15 companies established at the hub at the time of its launch last week, including KPMG, MUFG Bank and numerous start-ups.

“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,” said Darian McBain, chief sustainability officer at MAS.

“This physical hub will augment MAS’ plans to launch a digital Greenprint Marketplace next year to catalyse 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.”

Project Greenprint is a collection of initiatives that aims to harness technology and data in order to improve ESG transparency.

In August two fintechs – STACS and U-Reg – developed a platform for Singapore corporates’ ESG reporting that aims to make it simpler to disclose ESG data using MAS’ registry, which is part of Project Greenprint.