Thought Leadership

Bike sharing offers an innovative solution to the pollution and congestion problems facing urban cities around the world. Prof Sumit Agarwal, Managing Director of SGFIN reasoned that where a particular innovation could generate many positive externalities, regulators should support and manage its development and progress, as well as its wider impact. He argued the careful need to consider how regulation and innovation could work together to better support Singapore’s drive to encourage and nurture innovators. NUS News

In the financial quotient series, Assoc Prof Zhang Weina, Deputy Director of SGFIN explained that impact investing was an alternative but important consideration for investors who cared about environmental and social impact of their capital investment.

NUS News

In a NUS study investigating electricity consumption of households involving 5,300 HDB blocks, Prof Sumit Agarwal, Managing Director of SGFIN shed light that the increased consumption of electricity by households near the sites to shield from noise pollution continued to be so even after construction had ended. Given the potential astronomical consumption involved when over one million HDB flats and many construction activities were factored in, he recommended real time data feeds to households on usage and cost to induce a change of behaviour away from the persistent habit of consuming electricity for ventilation comfort.

Business Times article

In this international research collaboration involving NUS to study how households’ shower water usage behaviour could be improved for water conservation, Prof Sumit Agarwal, Managing Director of SGFIN shared findings on how offering real data to households could promote awareness in water conservation, by getting them to set personal targets and giving them feedback on their usage performances as the means to persuade lower water consumption.

Channel News Asia article