International Profiling - Strategic Engagements with Stakeholders

International Profiling

International Organization of Securities Commissions, ASEAN Capital Markets Forums and International Trade

The SC continues to demonstrate its commitment to global regulatory policy making and international standard-setting by being actively involved in the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), the leading international standard-setter for securities regulation. IOSCO’s membership regulates more than 95% of the world’s capital markets in more than 130 jurisdictions.

In IOSCO, the SC is a member of the Board and also a members of the Fintech Task Force (FTF) and Sustainable Finance Task Force (STF). In 2025, the SC contributed to FTF’s work relating to developments in financial markets on the areas of AI and financial asset tokenisation. In the STF, the SC continues to actively participate in efforts to monitor implementation of the ISSB standards, on work relating to International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IAASB) and International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ (IESBA) standards for assurance and ethics, sustainable bond markets and ESG benchmarks, among others.

The SC is also a leading member of IOSCO’s Growth and Emerging Markets Committee (GEMC), which comprises 80% of IOSCO’s overall membership. As a GEM Steering Committee member and a member of the GEMC’s Market Development Working Group, the SC also profiled the SC’s Roadmap for catalysing SME access to the capital market in Malaysia to help shape future GEMC agenda and discussions on market development at the GEMC annual meeting that took place in December.

The SC is also actively involved in the Asia Pacific Regional Committee (APRC) especially within the APRC Scams Online Working Group’s Platform Providers’ Engagement Sub-Group, which actively engaged platform providers such as Google, Meta and Tencent to exchange experiences and jointly address regional and national issues and challenges in efforts to mitigate scams and online harms.

During the annual EU-Asia Pacific Regulatory Forum held in February 2025 in conjunction with the APRC meeting, senior policymakers from the European Commission and Asia Pacific securities regulators discussed key policy and market developments within the respective regions. This included areas relating to fintech (crypto assets, operational resilience and AI) and sustainable finance (ESG disclosure, taxonomy and transition finance).

The SC is also a key member of IOSCO’s various committees such as the Committee on Emerging Risks, Assessment Committee, Committee on Secondary Market Regulation and Committee on Retail Investors. The SC was involved in the development of the IOSCO Risk Outlook 2026 that reviewed emerging global risks, trends and vulnerabilities and their implications for global capital markets for the year. Within IOSCO’s Committee of Retail Investors, the SC is involved in the work relating to investor resilience and relationship investment scams.

The SC also participates actively in the various IOSCO networks to gain useful insights, share and tap into the relevant experience and expertise of regulators. These networks include the IOSCO’s Primary Markets Network, Diversity Network, Anti Money Laundering Network, the IOSCO APRC’s Supervisory Directors’ Network and IOSCO APRC’s Enforcement Directors’ Network.

International Co-operation on Cross-border Enforcement, Supervision and Surveillance

An important priority area for the SC has been to strengthen cross-border co-operation in the areas of enforcement and supervision. As a signatory to the IOSCO Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMOU) on co-operation and exchange of information, the SC can obtain valuable information and evidence to support our enforcement actions.

The SC is also signatory to the IOSCO APRC Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding for Supervisory Cooperation (Supervisory MMOU). With the signing of this Supervisory MMOU (since 2022), the SC now has a co-operative arrangement on supervisory matters with its regional regulatory counterparts, including in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand.

In May 2025, the SC successfully became a signatory to the IOSCO EMMoU. The EMMoU avails signatories expanded forms of assistance abbreviated as ‘ACFIT’ which includes the ability to obtain (A) audit papers, (C) compel attendance for testimony, (F) freeze assets, and obtain (I) internet service provider and (T) telephone records and follows from IOSCO’s first Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMOU). To date, SC continues to actively and successfully collaborate with other signatories under the MMOU and EMMoU framework.

Recognising the importance of experience-sharing in the areas of cross-border supervision, enforcement and surveillance, the SC participated in the APRC Supervisory Directors’ meetings and Enforcement Directors’ meetings held in Q1 2025.

In October 2025, SC also hosted a one-day IOSCO APRC Supervisory Directors Network Meeting. The meeting was joined by APRC participants from various jurisdictions such as Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore and Thailand where participants engaged in robust discussions on the broader topics of cybersecurity and finfluencers with a focus on emerging threats, trends, challenges and measures being undertaken to ensure investor protection.

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.