In a recent roundtable on transition finance with the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), JLN spoke with three dynamic leaders representing exchanges from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), all members of the World Federation of Exchanges. Speaking with us were Dr. Soraphol Tulayasathien, senior executive vice president, Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET); Dr Hezri Adnan, current director, group sustainability of Bursa Malaysia; and Laurent Poirot, head of product strategy and development at SGX. Contributing to the conversation were Nandini Sukumar, CEO of the WFE and Victoria Powell, senior manager – ESG, regulatory affairs for the WFE.
A major thread of this conversation, rich with information about transition finance in the ASEAN region, was the heavy lifting done by each of the exchanges to get all the parts moving together collaboratively toward the goals of the Paris Agreement. The exchange executives discussed the policy approaches and financial services their exchanges are supporting to foster the economic transition to net zero.
Among the initiatives discussed at this WFE Roundtable: SET is committed to fostering long-term growth in the Thai capital market by developing a sustainability ecosystem encompassing infrastructure, supply, and demand. SET itself is becoming a Net Zero Organization. Bursa Malaysia is actively preparing the marketplace for climate finance by enhancing sustainability reporting requirements for listed issuers, aligning climate risk disclosures with TCFD, and providing thought leadership in climate change reporting. SGX’s focus is on capital and the crucial role exchanges play in facilitating capital flow. But before that can happen, investors need comparable and robust data, to understand where capital is needed and where the projects are. That is the thinking and intention behind SGX’s ESGenome, a platform that supports companies so they can share their sustainability disclosures.
