Ivan Mortimer-Schutts

This roundtable furthers Elevandi’s focus on developing the digital public goods, including at the 2023 Singapore FinTech Festival and 2024 Japan FinTech Festival.

Operating under the theme of Decoding Digital Assets and Payments, this roundtable will inform policy and business leaders on how data ecosystem development and cross border data policies may impact emerging digitalization agendas within trade, finance and sustainability. Alongside the G7 agenda for Data Free-Flow with Trust (DFFT), these areas of economic activity and policy require enhanced mechanisms for trusted and reliable data sharing or analysis across jurisdictional and policy borders.

It aims to enhance awareness and dialogue between different international initiatives shaping policy governing cross-border data flows. There are several key initiatives in this area, each emanating from a different policy domain.

- The DFFT initiative set out by the G7 and G20 aims to promote cross border data flows while respecting privacy, security, and intellectual property rights;
- the CPMI agenda aims to provide support to enhance efficiency, transparency, and safety of cross border payments with interoperability as a key building block; and
- the ICC Digital Standards Initiative convenes trade and finance stakeholders to enable trade digitalization with interoperability and data sharing as primary objectives, and where success relies on the free flow of commercial data in cross border supply chains.

Other initiatives include bilateral digital trade agreements that seek to enhance access to data and systems such as credit bureaus or business registry and legal data normally reserved for domestic institutions or industry members. In this patchwork of critical initiatives, this roundtable provides an opportunity for mutual update and dialogue across to forge more effective, integrated approaches to data governance and flows in support of the global digital economy.

Attendees will be invited to participate in polls and Q&A.

Attendees who wish to familiarise themselves with the topic may refer to the reference materials below.
- Foundations for Cross Border Data Flows to support Digital Finance Trade and Sustainability - From Idea to Implementation
- Shaping data policies through cross-border collaboration
- Digital economy: Data-driven financial services with trade | SFF 2023

This roundtable furthers Elevandi’s focus on overcoming the limiting factors preventing scaling of practices serving the Sustainable Development Goals. The 2023 Point Zero Forum considered the needs for interoperability, access and verification to track and finance net zero ambitions, which deepened into an examination of Project Savannah, a global initiative by UNDP, MAS, and GLEIF, at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The Japan Fintech Festival continued this in considering the value of a global common for climate data.

Operating under the theme of Elevating ESG, this roundtable brings together the right stakeholders to 1) share progress, insights and challenges; 2) specify the root cause of poor data quality hindering reporting efforts; and 3) shape a proposal for trusted, scalable market arrangements to mobilise granular, machine-issued data for ESG indicators and financial market innovations. Attaining granularity in data collection and consistency in reporting can drastically reduce the cost of assuring the integrity of disclosed ESG indicators, increasing information usability for strategic decision-making, financial products and data market while reducing the impeding reputation risk that arises from opaque reporting.

Attendees who wish to familiarise themselves with the topic may refer to the reference materials below.
- How to build trust in ESG data and disclosures
- Reference Materials for "Laying foundations for scalable markets in trusted and granular data for green reporting"