In Malaysia, there is growing acceptance and acknowledgement by industry leaders of the need for stronger ESG adoption. In fact, the country’s largest pension fund, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), recently launched its sustainable investment policy and announced it aims to have a fully ESG-compliant portfolio by 2030. “We aim to be a climate-neutral portfolio by 2050, with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions,” says EPF CEO Tunku Alizakri Raja Muhammad Alias during a recent virtual ESG Roundtable organised by Bursa Malaysia and FTSE Russell. The roundtable featured several industry leaders who called for stronger ESG practices to be embedded into businesses as well as having meaningful and uniform sustainability disclosures in place to help investors formulate their ESG investment strategies. Datuk Umar observes that there is now a real call to action that was not there before. And more than playing a regulatory role, Bursa wants to facilitate the market to reward good behaviour. “Previously when we talk of ESG, it sounded like a nebulous idea. But now it’s real. We see the FTSE4Good Bursa Malaysia Index growing. We see sustainable assets outperforming. So now you have a call to action that we need to take forward,” he says.

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