Raymond Cheung
Chartered Actuary · CRO · Board Adviser · Singapore
Most Singapore boards engaging an ESG adviser are not sure what they are buying. The adviser produces a report, delivers a workshop, ticks a governance box. Two years later the board still cannot explain its ESG risk exposure, challenge management's sustainability assumptions, or satisfy MAS that ESG governance is genuinely embedded. The problem is not the intention -- it is the criteria boards use to select and use their ESG advisers.
When I was advising a Singapore-listed company's board on ESG governance, the board's existing sustainability consultant had just delivered a 120-page materiality assessment. The directors had received it, acknowledged it, and filed it. Nobody on the board could tell me which of the material topics they considered highest priority, why, or how those judgments connected to the company's risk appetite. The consultant had done the work. The board had not been equipped to own the output. That is the distinction that separates a useful ESG adviser from a credentialled vendor.
ESG advisory in Singapore has matured faster than the governance frameworks boards use to deploy it. There are now dozens of firms offering ESG services to Singapore boards -- from the Big Four sustainability practices to specialist boutiques to individual advisers. Many of them are technically competent. Few of them are oriented toward making the board more capable rather than making the reporting more complete. Understanding the difference before you engage is the single most useful thing a Singapore board chair or nominating committee can do.
What a board-level ESG adviser actually does -- and what it does not
A board-level ESG adviser is not the same as a sustainability consultant. A sustainability consultant helps management identify, measure, and report ESG factors. That work has value. But the board's job is different: it is to govern the strategy, challenge management's assumptions, ensure material ESG risks are understood at the level where accountability sits, and satisfy MAS, SGX, and institutional investors that ESG governance is substantive rather than performative.
A board-level ESG adviser builds the board's own capability to do those things. The deliverable is not a report -- it is a board that can read a sustainability report critically, identify the assumptions embedded in a net zero transition plan, ask the question that the materiality assessment did not ask, and hold management to account for what it committed to in its ESG disclosures.
- Governance structure: Does the board have the right committee mandate, reporting lines, and escalation framework to give ESG matters the same rigour as financial risk? The ESG adviser should build this, not just review it.
- Board literacy: Can individual directors engage substantively with the ESG content they receive? The adviser should be able to assess the gap and close it through structured education, not generic training.
- Challenge capability: Can the board ask management the questions that matter -- on transition risk assumptions, on Scope 3 boundaries, on the credibility of sustainability targets? The adviser should prepare the board to ask those questions, not just to receive the answers.
- Regulatory positioning: Does the board's ESG governance meet what MAS and SGX actually require of its category of institution, and what will they require in the next two years? The adviser must understand this from inside the regulatory framework, not from a compliance checklist.
The difference between ESG content knowledge and board-level usefulness
ESG content knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. A strong ESG adviser for a Singapore insurance board needs to understand TCFD, ISSB, MAS's Environmental Risk Management guidelines, SGX's mandatory climate reporting requirements, and the direction of travel on transition planning expectations. That is the baseline. What differentiates a useful adviser from a knowledgeable one is whether they can translate that content into governance action at board level.
Governance action means changing how the board asks questions, what it expects in its management information, how it documents its ESG judgments, and how it holds management accountable for the commitments the company makes publicly. Most ESG advisers are oriented toward the content layer. Far fewer have the board experience to operate at the governance layer. When the two are confused, the result is a board that is better informed but not more capable.
“ESG reporting tells you what the company disclosed. ESG governance determines whether the board can tell you why those were the right disclosures -- and what would change if they were not.”
What to look for -- and what disqualifies candidates
The criteria I would apply to any ESG adviser being engaged at board level in Singapore are: regulatory literacy (do they understand MAS and SGX ESG requirements from inside the framework, not from secondary analysis?), governance experience (have they actually sat in a boardroom in a risk or advisory capacity, or is their experience management-side?), quantitative depth (can they engage with the climate risk modelling, Scope 3 estimation methodology, and transition cost assumptions that a technically credible board must be able to interrogate?), and independence (are they genuinely advising the board, or are they simultaneously serving management on the same ESG programme?).
The disqualifying characteristics are the mirror of those criteria. An ESG adviser who has never held regulatory accountability, whose ESG experience is entirely in sustainability team support rather than board governance, who cannot engage with quantitative assumptions at a level the board's actuarial or risk members would accept, or who is effectively the sustainability consultant reporting to both management and the board, is not positioned to add the value a board-level engagement requires.
Why this matters more as MAS's expectations tighten
MAS published its Transition Planning Guidelines for banks, asset managers, and insurers in 2024. The expectation is not that boards approve a sustainability report produced by management -- it is that boards genuinely understand the transition risks the institution faces, have challenged the assumptions in the transition plan, and can satisfy a supervisor that ESG governance is embedded in strategy and risk management rather than delegated to a team that produces documents. A board that has had a credentialled ESG adviser produce good reports is in a different position from a board that has been built by its ESG adviser to own the framework. MAS will be able to tell the difference.
The selection question for Singapore boards is not which ESG adviser has the best credentials or the most comprehensive methodology. It is which adviser is oriented toward making the board more capable rather than the reporting more complete. Those two objectives are not in opposition, but they require different advisers, and most boards that are underserved by their current ESG advisory engagement have confused them.
Common Questions
What does an ESG adviser do for a Singapore board?
A board-level ESG adviser in Singapore builds the board's own capability to govern ESG strategy, challenge management's sustainability assumptions, and satisfy MAS and SGX that ESG governance is substantive. This is distinct from a sustainability consultant, who helps management identify, measure, and report ESG factors. The board-level adviser's deliverable is a board that can interrogate ESG content critically, not a report it receives passively.
How do I evaluate an ESG adviser for a Singapore insurance board?
Apply four criteria: regulatory literacy (do they understand MAS Environmental Risk Management guidelines and SGX climate reporting requirements from inside the framework?), governance experience (have they operated at board level in a risk or advisory capacity, not only management-side?), quantitative depth (can they engage with climate risk modelling and transition plan assumptions?), and independence from the management team the board is supervising. Disqualify advisers who are simultaneously serving management and the board on the same ESG programme.
Why is ESG governance in Singapore boards different from ESG reporting?
ESG reporting is the output management produces. ESG governance is the board's capacity to challenge the assumptions behind that output, hold management accountable for the commitments made in public disclosures, and satisfy MAS that ESG risk is genuinely integrated into the institution's strategy and risk framework. Many Singapore boards have improved their ESG reporting significantly without improving their ESG governance -- they are better informed but no more capable of the challenge function the regulator and investors expect.
What does MAS expect of Singapore boards on ESG governance?
MAS's Transition Planning Guidelines and Environmental Risk Management guidelines expect boards to genuinely understand the climate and sustainability risks their institution faces, to have challenged the assumptions in management's transition plan, and to be able to demonstrate to a supervisor that ESG governance is embedded in strategy and risk management. The expectation is substantive board engagement, not approval of a sustainability report produced by management.
Related insights
About the author
Raymond Cheung is a Chartered Actuary, C-suite executive and board adviser with more than 20 years of experience across Asia in risk management, insurance, ESG and corporate governance. He is the CEO of CER Consultancy and an accredited trainer at SMU Academy and the Singapore College of Insurance.