Three-quarters of CEOs expect ESG investments to pay off after 3 to 7 years

About 72% of CEOs said it will benefit M&A (24%) and talent attraction (24%).

Singapore’s top bosses are continuing their investment in ESG, with over a third of CEOs (36%) changing the language they use to refer to ESG both internally and externally, according to KPMG’s study.

The study also showed that about one in two Singapore CEOs (52%) have fully embedded ESG into their business to create value.

The majority of CEOs in Singapore (36%) are “choosing to focus their ESG investments on governance and transparency protocols, such as best practice reporting, with less attention being paid to social and community programmes.“

Two in five CEOs said their top barrier is the lack of internal governance and controls to operationalise these goals. 

Only 8% of CEOs in Singapore say that they currently have the capability and capacity to meet new reporting standards, compared with 50% in Asia Pacific and 74% globally – which means there is still some progress to be made. 

One of the biggest downsides of failing to “meet the ESG expectations of stakeholders continues to be the higher cost of and difficulty in raising finance (32%).”