Communication and Outreach - Strategic Engagements with Stakeholders

Communication and Outreach

Batik Lestari 2025: Empowering Sustainability and Expanding Market Access

Now in its second year, Batik Lestari continues as a strategic initiative to elevate Malaysian batik through a sustainability-driven approach, in alignment with Malaysia’s ASEAN Chairmanship 2025. Building on the success of its inaugural festival in 2024, the programme advances the preservation of heritage, artisan empowerment and broader market integration. To date, the programme has engaged 69 artisans and 51 registered vendors, contributing to increased visibility and commercial viability.

The artisans and batik entrepreneurs were provided with a platform to promote and at the time to generate economic value having access to capital market and be part of ASEAN Capital Market Forum meetings that were organised throughout 2025 in in Kuala Lumpur, Melaka, Penang and Kuching. Further institutional support was established with the launch of the Batik Lestari Sales Gallery at the SC premises in May 2025, providing a dedicated platform to connect artisans with corporate and public audiences.

The annual anchor event, the Batik Lestari Festival 2025 (5-7 November), was held coinciding with the final set of ACMF meetings hosted by Malaysia. The three-day festival featured artisan showcases, retail activations, business dialogues and a fashion presentation highlighting contemporary interpretations of batik. A special gala show on 6 November celebrated batik’s evolution across past, present, and future. On 7 November, Kraftangan Malaysia was formally appointed as the SC’s strategic partner, reinforcing national-level collaboration and MSME development. In parallel, the development of the Sustainable Batik Disclosure Guide (SBDG) was initiated to promote ESG principles across the batik value chain for adoption among batik Malaysia practitioners.

Advancing the Market through Industry Engagements

In line with SC’s commitment to foster market development and accessibility, the SC continues to engage with industry stakeholders to gain comprehensive insights from market participants, intermediaries, exchanges and peer regulators. These engagements served as a collaborative avenue to align expectations and identify emerging opportunities for the betterment of the industry, as well as inform policymaking.

Discussions centred around exploring regional opportunities, encouraging trading participation of our youths and augmenting the stockbroking industry, among others.

Through these collaborative dialogues, the SC remains committed to facilitating constructive industry feedback and integrating relevant enhancements to support the development of Malaysia’s capital market.

Mitigating Systemic Risks And Promoting Financial Stability

Enhanced Risk Governance Framework

In 2021, the SC-wide risk governance framework was enhanced as part of an overall initiative to have an effective integrated and predictive risk surveillance to maintain regulatory agility.

The structured risk governance framework integrated the wider spectrum of risks such as technology, cyber and conduct risk at the SC’s Systemic Risk Oversight Committee (SROC) and Accounting, Market and Corporate Surveillance Committee (ACMS).

Intensified surveillance

The SC continued to intensify its surveillance of systemic risk to maintain market resilience and stability. Regular SROC engagements were held to deliberate concerns emanating from various segments across the capital market. Domestic equity and bond market, foreign fund flows and trade participation continued to be monitored closely for potential stress points.

In addition, measures and economic stimulus packages introduced by the government to weather the impact of COVID-19, market trading conduct and the financial position of listed companies were among the focus areas for discussion.

Thematic assessments

The SC also conducted thematic assessments covering investors’ fund flows, the position of firms, and policy decisions to ascertain the possible impact on the capital market. In 2021, the SC reviewed and enhanced its crisis indicators on potential emerging risks in the
capital market.

The enhanced crisis indicators provided a reference point for escalation to SROC when the identified indicators and triggers materialised and ensured prompt response to manage and prevent any issues of concern that might lead to a systemic crisis.

Joint regulatory discussions

In 2021, the SC conducted frequent joint regulatory discussions with other authorities such as Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and Labuan Financial Services Authority (Labuan FSA) to identify systemic risk concern areas within the financial and capital markets in Malaysia.

Monitoring of various components of the capital market

The SC continued its efforts to undertake a methodological and integrated approach to ensure any potential systemic risk was being monitored, mitigated, or managed. Figure 1 highlights the findings from the following risk assessments on the various components of the capital market.