For decades, Malaysia’s competitiveness formula was relatively straightforward: keep costs manageable, build good infrastructure, stay connected to global trade, attract investment, and improve efficiency. That formula still matters, but it is no longer enough.
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Businesses today operate in an environment where the assumptions behind a five-year plan can change in five months. Energy prices fluctuate, supply chains are disrupted, customers want greater visibility into how products are made, reporting requirements are becoming more sophisticated, new technologies are changing operating models, and extreme weather can interrupt production and logistics. The competitive question is therefore no longer simply who can produce at the lowest cost, but who can adapt fastest when the conditions of competition change.
This matters because resilience is still often treated as something that sits within the sustainability function. It is becoming a test of business quality. The floods that hit Malaysia in late 2021 and early 2022 caused RM6.1 billion (US$1.49 billion) in losses, affecting homes, businesses, manufacturing, agriculture, and public infrastructure. For companies caught in such disruptions, the issue is not how well they can describe resilience, but whether they understand their vulnerabilities, have alternative suppliers, protect critical facilities, and can respond quickly when normal operations are interrupted.
Adaptability is a capability
Adaptability is often treated as a matter of culture – something that agile organisations simply possess. But in a more volatile operating environment, it is increasingly a capability that businesses need to build deliberately, before they need it.
That requires more than a willingness to change. Businesses need information that helps them identify risks early, people who understand what those risks mean, governance that enables timely decisions, and sufficient financial capacity to invest before a vulnerability becomes a crisis. These are the capabilities that determine how quickly a company can respond when energy costs rise, a major customer changes its procurement standards, a supplier is disrupted or new technology begins to alter the economics of an industry.
Building that capability also requires investment in people. At Maybank, more than 2,300 colleagues across the region have gone through our Maybank Sustainability Practitioner Certification programme since 2024, reflecting a broader need to take sustainability capability beyond specialist teams and into everyday commercial and risk decisions.
The most resilient companies are not necessarily those that can predict what comes next, but those that can absorb new information, adjust their assumptions, and respond when their predictions prove wrong.
This is also why the distinction between sustainability strategy and business strategy is becoming increasingly blurred. Climate risk that interrupts production is an operational issue; changing customer expectations are a commercial issue; energy prices affect margins; and disclosure requirements influence how investors and lenders assess companies.
Financial institutions see this more clearly because they are increasingly required to assess not only how a company performs today, but how well prepared it is for future risks. When a bank asks about a company’s transition plan, emissions profile, energy exposure, or supply-chain risks, the expectation is not that every problem has already been solved. What matters is whether management understands the risks it faces and whether there is a credible plan to respond.
A good transition plan therefore tells us something about how a business is run. Does management know where its biggest exposures are? Has it identified the investments required and established clear accountability? If the plan backed by action, can progress be measured and does it remain credible if assumptions change?
These questions increasingly matter to creditworthiness because financiers are ultimately trying to understand whether a business can continue creating value as its operating environment evolves. In that sense, sustainable finance is gradually becoming simply finance. Climate, nature, and social considerations are increasingly entering ordinary assessments of risk, return, and long-term value rather than sitting alongside them as a separate exercise.
We can already see that shift in demand. By the end of 2025, Maybank mobilised RM176 billion (US$43.1 billion) in sustainable finance, more than twice its original RM80 billion (US$19.6 billion) target and has since set a refreshed target of mobilising RM300 billion (US$73.5 billion) across Asean between 2026 and 2030. The figures point to growing appetite for sustainable and transition financing in the region. But capital alone is not enough. Businesses still need credible plans, investable projects and the capacity to execute them.
Finance is not a substitute for a plan
There is sometimes an assumption that financial institutions can accelerate transition simply by creating greener or sustainability-linked products. Finance is important, but capital on its own does not transform a business. A company still needs a viable project, credible management, reliable information and the ability to execute.
The same applies to transition finance. Many sectors that remain important to Malaysia and Asean are still carbon-intensive, and they cannot simply be switched off without consequences for jobs, energy security, and economic growth. The more practical challenge is to finance credible changes in technology, operations, and business models without compromising jobs, energy security, and economic growth.
Affordability must also be part of that equation. An energy transition that strengthens decarbonisation but weakens energy security or places unsustainable costs on households and businesses will be difficult to sustain. Malaysia must therefore manage several objectives at once: cleaner energy, sufficient and reliable supply, competitive costs, and a transition that creates rather than displaces economic opportunity.
The human dimension matters too. The National Energy Transition Roadmap estimates that the transition could create around 310,000 green-growth jobs by 2050 but realising that opportunity will require skills and workforce readiness to advance alongside technology and capital. The transition must ultimately work for people, not simply happen around them.
That also changes the role of financial institutions. Relationship managers increasingly need to understand what is changing in a client’s sector, where risks and opportunities are emerging, and what financing can support the response. Tools and processes matter only if they translate ambitions into better business and financing decisions.
Malaysia’s competitiveness test
Malaysia’s competitiveness debate now needs to extend beyond cost, infrastructure, productivity and efficiency. These remain important, but businesses also need the ability to anticipate emerging risks, absorb shocks and change course as the conditions around them evolve.
A recent discussion on Malaysia’s energy transition at the JC3 Journey to Zero Conference 2026 highlighted how quickly the conversation is moving beyond ambition to implementation — the infrastructure, technology, talent and financing needed to deliver the transition while supporting economic growth. That same shift needs to happen within businesses. The question is no longer simply whether companies recognise that change is coming, but whether they are building the capabilities to respond to it.
Malaysia does not need every company to become a sustainability expert. It needs companies that understand how changes in energy, climate, technology and market expectations affect their business, and that are prepared to respond in ways that protect value, competitiveness and continuity.
The strongest transition plans will therefore not sit separately from corporate strategy. They will be corporate strategy. For Malaysia, the competitive question is no longer simply how efficiently its businesses can compete today, but how quickly they can adapt to the conditions that will define competitiveness tomorrow.
Shahril Azuar Jimin is Maybank Group Chief Sustainability Officer & Deputy Chair of Sub-Committee 4 (SC4) of Malaysia’s Joint Committee on Climate Change (JC3).
