GreenMoolah launched to support SMEs

Photo by Scott Webb f

MoolahSense has announced the launch of GreenMoolah, a platform focused on accelerating green and sustainable financing in Singapore and the region.

With a large number of government-linked and large corporations in the region embarking on achieving net zero emissions by 2030, regional and local authorities including businesses are scaling up their efforts to support the reduction of emissions. This has created a global demand for green and sustainable financing.

However, access to affordable loans remains the key challenge for SMEs today.

The GreenMoolah Platform

GreenMoolah provides crowdfunding platform to assist SMEs who have been left out to understand and embark on projects within the ESG framework, as well as to showcase to investors on how sustainable financing can be profitable.

This not only provides positive contributions to the environment, but also helps investors to embrace the idea of sustainable financing. Such efforts are consistent with commitments under the Singapore Green Plan 2030 to advance Singapore’s national agenda on sustainable development, and places emphasis on the importance of driving high-integrity green finance.

Ms Melissa Tan, CEO of Wah & Hua Pte Ltd and the Chairman for the Waste Management and Recycling Association of Singapore said, “With over 70 million Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) within the Southeast Asia region and accounting for over 140 million employees, there is an increasing need for businesses to adopt sustainable business models.

“However, with limitations of financing from traditional banks, these SMEs are facing challenges to transform and accelerate their businesses. In the long term, this will affect the sustainability of business and even the livelihood of their employees.

“The pressure is more evident in the current pandemic where businesses are forced to shut down. Hence, riding on the peer-to-peer lending concept, this platform could help SMEs who are unable to meet the traditional banks financing criteria.”

Leveraging on the GreenTrust Framework, a digital utility spearheaded by MoolahSense as the key underlying technology for interoperability and verification, end-to-end financing for SMEs on the GreenMoolah platform can be instantly authenticated, digitally processed and provenance tracing obtained simply by scanning a QR code that’s embedded into the Digital Certificates.

“I believe that most SME owners will want to play their part in the efforts towards sustainability. However, as business owners, their primary focus would be on profitability. With limited resources in both manpower and finance, and insufficient related experience, it makes embarking on transformation even more challenging for them.

“Through MoolahSense, the green framework we have developed and in the near future digitalized with the use of technology like blockchain and IOT, it makes understanding assessments and reporting easier” said Andrew Quek, Investment Director of MoolahSense.