Hong Leong Bank’s Silver wins for Asia’s Best Sustainability Report (CEO Letter) and Asia’s Best SDG Reporting at the 11th Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards reflect more than polished disclosures—they signal a deeper shift in how sustainability is embedded across the business. As Chief Sustainability Officer Chow Sheng Wai puts it, “The report is simply the output.” In this exclusive interview, Chow explains how breaking internal silos, integrating ESG into governance and capital allocation, and aligning with emerging frameworks such as IFRS S1 and S2 have transformed reporting from a compliance exercise into a driver of long-term value, resilience, and trust.
Congratulations on winning at the 11th Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards. What does this recognition mean for your sustainability team and your organisation?
We are incredibly honoured to have won the Silver Awards for Best SDG Reporting and Best Sustainability Report (CEO Letter). This significant recognition serves as powerful, independent validation of the Bank’s unwavering commitment to transparency and accountability in our sustainability disclosures.
These awards immediately boost our standing, demonstrating our dedication to robust Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices. This not only enhances our reputation among key stakeholders—investors, customers, and the public—but also strategically positions the Bank as a regional leader and benchmark for excellence in corporate reporting and sustainability best practices. Ultimately, this recognition helps build greater trust and signals our focus on long-term value creation.
More importantly, this achievement is a huge acknowledgment of the hard work, expertise, and dedication of our sustainability team and every colleague involved in the reporting process. It fully validates their commitment to producing a high-quality, comprehensive, and truly transparent report. Winning these awards strengthens our resolve and provides essential internal momentum and support to accelerate our sustainability journey and future initiatives.
Sustainability reporting has evolved rapidly. How has your reporting approach matured over the past few years, and what were the biggest lessons from this journey?
Over the past few years, our sustainability reporting approach has matured significantly, shifting from largely voluntary, qualitative disclosures to a more integrated, quantitative, and financially material reporting framework. This evolution mirrors the global trend toward standardised and mandatory ESG disclosure.
Our early reports primarily focused on fulfilling minimum regulatory requirements, however, we now treat the report as a strategic governance tool. It explicitly connects our ESG performance with risks and opportunities, demonstrating how sustainability creates long-term value and resilience for the business and stakeholders.
The report is simply the output. The biggest gain has been breaking down internal silos. Our finance, risk, and strategy teams must now collaborate seamlessly with the sustainability team to embed ESG factors into capital allocation, lending policies, and risk models. This integrated thinking is the true engine of value creation.
While the global mandate for IFRS S1 and S2 provides a standardised floor for reporting, stopping at compliance risks missing significant opportunities. The lesson is to use the mandated requirements as a catalyst to drive strategic change in the business, thereby turning a reporting requirement into a long-term competitive differentiator.
The ASRA judges emphasise rigour, transparency, and impact. Which parts of your report do you feel best demonstrate these qualities?
We adopt a continuous improvement approach to our sustainability reporting, ensuring our disclosures meet the highest standards of rigour, demonstrate measurable impact, and maintain absolute transparency.
Selected sustainability indicators are externally validated which provides independent verification of critical sustainability data, such as energy and water consumption, GHG emissions, green financing totals, community investment and local supplier spending.
We further demonstrate rigour by integrating sustainability risks and performance metrics directly into our corporate governance structure, including oversight by the Board Risk Management Committee and the explicit linkage of performance to executive remuneration.
We focus on quantifiable outcomes that demonstrate long-term value creation. Our impact is quantified by the measurable success of key strategic initiatives, such as achieving RM3.5 billion in cumulative approved renewable energy financing and RM14.6 billion in total outstanding green and affordable mortgages.
We demonstrate socio-economic impact through clear disclosures on local supplier spending and our community investment contributions, which directly benefitted over 9,000 individuals in the past year.
We track and report on our performance in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I), including detailed data on gender pay ratio and workforce composition, reinforcing our commitment to human capital and social impact.
We prioritize clarity, accountability, and comprehensive disclosure practices by clearly and objectively stating the targets, methodologies, assumptions, and limitations used to derive all calculations and approaches.
Where necessary, we state all restatements and errors explicitly, along with the corrective action taken, ensuring the integrity of our historical data and comparative performance.
We enhance transparency by disclosing our progress on complex topics like the adoption of IFRS S1 and S2 (ISSB) and the baseline measurement of Scope 3 financed emissions, including their respective PCAF data quality scores.
Could you walk us through the process of materiality assessment — and how you are now integrating double materiality or value-chain impacts into your reporting?
We recognise the dynamic nature of the sustainability landscape. To ensure our strategic focus remains relevant and impactful, we conduct a full materiality assessment every two to three years, incorporating key developments in the global and regional sustainability environment. Our approach identifies the impact of sustainability topics on our performance, as well as the impact of our business activities along the value chain on the community and environment.
The last full assessment was conducted in 2023 to validate and inform the Bank’s current sustainability strategy as well as develop a more profound approach to ESG reporting and disclosure. We took into account the diverse views of a broad range of stakeholders across our operating entities, including the Board, senior management, employees, regulators, investors, analysts, customers, media, vendors, suppliers, and the community. In the interim years, we conduct annual reviews to maintain strategic relevance, confirming our priorities against emerging trends and shifts in stakeholder expectations.
Our next full assessment is scheduled for 2026 where we plan to conduct a double materiality assessment to ensure a holistic and future-proof strategy that aligns with both evolving global standards and stakeholder expectations.
How do you ensure data accuracy and credibility across complex topics such as GHG emissions, supply-chain sustainability, and human rights?
This is primarily achieved through a combination of standardised methodologies, robust internal controls, and independent external assurance. We adhere to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard ensures consistency in defining boundaries, choosing appropriate emission factors, and calculating Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. This provides a common language for reporting. We also leveraged on international reporting standards such as GRI which provides structured and defined metrics, as well as national standards such as Bank Negara Malaysia (Central Bank of Malaysia) and Bursa Malaysia (Malaysia Exchange). We established clear reporting boundaries across all operational sites and time periods as well as state our limitations and errors where possible.
What new sustainability frameworks (for example, ISSB or TNFD) are you preparing to align with, and what challenges or opportunities do they bring?
The Malaysian government, through the Securities Commission, recently mandated the adoption of IFRS S1 (General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information) and IFRS S2 (Climate-related Disclosures) via the National Sustainability Reporting Framework (NSRF), published in September 2024. The NSRF is designed to achieve two critical objectives: improving the connectivity between sustainability performance and financial reporting, and ensuring a globally aligned sustainability reporting standard for Malaysian companies.
As a public-listed company, we are committed to achieving full compliance with these rigorous requirements by 2027. We view this regulatory imperative as a strategic opportunity to fundamentally enhance the transparency, comparability, and usefulness of our sustainability disclosures for investors and all key stakeholders.
The opportunities we foresee include aligning our disclosures with internationally recognised and rigorous standards, creating a more streamlined and structured reporting framework to our stakeholders and increasing stakeholder trust through clearer, standardised data. However, we acknowledge that IFRS S1 and S2 reporting is still nascent globally, and we are adopting a prudent, phased approach to meeting these reporting requirements.
By proactively managing this transition, we are strengthening our governance and reinforcing our commitment to building long-term resilience and value.
Reporting aside, which sustainability initiative or achievement from the past year are you personally most proud of?
The launch of the SFF itself was an achievement that I’m proud of—it defined our commitment to mobilise RM20 billion toward sustainable projects over five years. But the pride comes from what that framework has actually enabled in the past year. We didn’t just meet our first-year targets under the SFF; we far exceeded them. We had mobilised over RM4.5 billion in total sustainable financing.
This achievement means that our framework is a functioning, catalytic tool that is actively funding tangible environmental change. We are successfully directing capital where it’s needed most: into solar farms, energy efficiency upgrades, and green logistics.
What I find most satisfying is how the SFF allows us to move beyond just financing large-scale projects and support the SME sector in its transition.
We’ve been able to expand our Growth Sector Specialist team which means we’re not just lending money; we’re giving tailored guidance to small businesses. We help them structure their transition projects so they can access funding (including national facilities like Bank Negara Malaysia’s Low Carbon Transition Facility).
By giving SMEs the tools and financing to go green, we are building a truly resilient, low-carbon economy from the ground up. This shift—from being a provider of capital to being a partner in decarbonisation—is the real performance differentiator that makes me proud.
How do you engage internal teams and business units in the sustainability agenda so that reporting reflects genuine performance, not just compliance?
Our sustainability strategy is governed by a robust governance structure that ensures strategic direction and accountability at every level. Internally, we organise via the Sustainability Working Committee, or SWC, which is composed of Sustainability Champions across various divisions and is responsible for steering and executing the Bank’s sustainability strategies. This multi-divisional representation fosters cooperation, collaboration, and alignment on our sustainability initiatives. The SWC reports directly to the Sustainability Committee, or SC, which is composed of Senior Management personnel from various divisions. The SC acts as the primary enabler, providing guidance and oversight of the Bank’s sustainability strategies, and climate-related goals. This ensures that sustainability is driven from the top down (SC oversight) and embedded from the bottom up (SWC execution), effectively breaking down operational silos and actively promoting cross-divisional collaboration to achieve our strategic goals.
Many companies are still struggling to link sustainability KPIs with business results. How has your organisation made that connection visible in its strategy and disclosures?
We are also still at the beginning of our journey and we are still improving our disclosures year on year. The launch of our sustainable finance framework in 2024 helped to align and steer our course towards embedding sustainability into business results. We see the opportunities green financing can bring as this is a growing and developing sector and tapping into this early makes business sense. We also see business opportunities in terms of energy efficiency and management – reducing usage cuts down on our operational costs significantly.
Finally, what advice would you give to other sustainability professionals aspiring to reach ASRA-winning standards in their reports?
Prioritise Assurance: Don’t wait for mandatory external assurance; voluntarily seek limited assurance from reputable external parties on your most material quantitative metrics (e.g., GHG emissions, water, waste, and key financing figures). This is the clearest signal of data rigour.
Work on decarbonisation pathways: Start calculating and disclosing your Scope 1, 2 and Scope 3 emissions using internationally recognised methodologies like PCAF, even if data quality scores are initially low and work upwards. This is critical for investor transparency.
Show Governance in Action: Detail the roles and responsibilities of all levels of governance, from Board oversight to working-level committees, showing how ESG issues are embedded into risk management, remuneration, and decision-making.
