Manulife Investment Management joins forces with STACS’ ESGpedia registry on a pilot for effective review of sustainability labelled bonds ¹

The STACS’ ESGpedia platform will assist Manulife Investment Management in its pilot to monitor the underlying quality of sustainable investments. ESGpedia powers the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’s Greenprint ESG Registry, and is intended to provide holistic ESG data across multiple sectors and digital tools to enable ongoing monitoring and visibility of sustainability claims made by sustainability labelled bonds.

SINGAPORE, 3 November 2022 –

The global wealth and asset management segment of Manulife Financial Corporation, Manulife Investment Management today announced its cooperation with Singapore-headquartered environmental, social, and governance (‘ESG’) fintech Hashstacs Pte Ltd (‘STACS’).

The cooperation centres around the usage of STACS’ ESGpedia digital registry, which powers the ESG Registry of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (‘MAS’) Project Greenprint. A pilot phase of the cooperation is underway, where Manulife Investment Management seeks to pilot innovative investment monitoring techniques for sustainable investments.

Real-time visibility of sustainability data for sustainability labelled bonds
The arrangement enables Manulife Investment Management to leverage ESG data and digital tools on STACS’ ESGpedia for ongoing monitoring of investments in sustainability labelled bonds, through visibility of the underlying certifications on the asset and/ or portfolio level by the issuers.

The asset management industry faces challenges around ESG data, with a lack of forward-looking disclosure, real-time data, and common taxonomy. Data is fragmented and being presented in either narrative or unstructured form, with no “golden” copy data architecture of investible instruments, hindering effective sustainable investment decisions. Current processes of sustainability assessment as well as monitoring and servicing are also highly manual and labour-intensive as a result.

ESGpedia serves as a central ESG registry for the specific financial dataset, aggregating ESG data and certifications across multiple industry data sources, to support sustainable investing through holistic data and digital tools.  Through the utilization of ESGpedia in Manulife Investment Management’s monitoring system, it hopes to effectively digitally enhance the workflows involved for sustainability-labelled bonds investment monitoring process.

In addition to allowing customers to access ongoing data from authorised counterparties via data consent management, the portfolio monitoring tool on ESGpedia aims to streamline the monitoring of sustainability labelled bonds by highlighting third party sustainability-related certifications of underlying assets. This allows for an effective and digital way to have greater visibility into the third-party assurances and underlying assets of sustainability labelled bonds which can support sustainability engagement with portfolio companies.

Greater asset level details on green and sustainability-related certifications
Eric Nietsch, Head of Sustainable Investing, Asia at Manulife Investment Management, said: “STACS ESGpedia portfolio monitoring tool is intended to allow us to see greater asset level details, such as the green certifications of the buildings financed by green bonds. This would support our ongoing due diligence and monitoring of investee companies.”

Benjamin Soh, Co-Founder and Managing Director at STACS, said: “At STACS, we aim to bring forward the future of ESG finance via holistic data and digital tools on ESGpedia. We are excited to be working with Manulife Investment Management to enhance effective investment monitoring of its sustainability-labelled bonds and streamline the existing process digitally.”

[1] Sustainability-labelled bonds include but not limited to Green, Social, Sustainability and Sustainability-linked bonds

For further information, please contact:

Manulife Investment Management (https://www.manulifeim.com.sg/)
Carl Wong, Head of Media Relations and Social, Asia
Tel: (852) 2510 3180
Email: [email protected]

STACS (https://stacs.io/)
Grace Lim, Senior Marketing Manager
Email: [email protected]

About Manulife Investment Management
Manulife Investment Management is the global brand for the global wealth and asset management segment of Manulife Financial Corporation. We draw on more than a century of financial stewardship and the full resources of our parent company to serve individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide. Headquartered in Toronto, our leading capabilities in public and private markets are strengthened by an investment footprint that spans 19 geographies. We complement these capabilities by providing access to a network of unaffiliated asset managers from around the world. We’re committed to investing responsibly across our businesses. We develop innovative global frameworks for sustainable investing, collaboratively engage with companies in our securities portfolios, and maintain a high standard of stewardship where we own and operate assets, and we believe in supporting financial well-being through our workplace retirement plans. Today, plan sponsors around the world rely on our retirement plan administration and investment expertise to help their employees plan for, save for, and live a better retirement. Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulifeim.com.

About STACS
STACS (Hashstacs Pte Ltd) is a Singapore-headquartered FinTech company focused on ESG FinTech, operating ESGpedia, which powers the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Greenprint ESG Registry. STACS serves as the Nexus of ESG Finance with ESG data across multiple industries and digital tools for the financial sector to scale decarbonisation financing, as well as a platform to provide high-quality carbon offsets to mitigate residual emissions. Its clients and partners include global financial institutions and corporates. STACS is an Award Winner of the MAS Global FinTech Innovation Challenge Awards 2020, and a two-time awardee of the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof of Concept (POC) grant, under the Financial Sector Development Fund administered by the MAS. For additional information, please visit www.stacs.io.

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