Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) issued the NSRF Guidance Documents for banks, insurers and takaful operators and agreed to fully adopt the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance as the basis for the Malaysia Taxonomy, in a joint statement released August 13, 2026 from the 17th meeting of the Joint Committee on Climate Change (JC3). The two outputs move Malaysian sustainable-finance reporting from framework adoption into implementation, with capacity-building starting October 2026 and a Malaysia Taxonomy pilot preceding full reporting adoption in 2028.
The guidance and the taxonomy decision affect the 25 JC3 member financial institutions, including Maybank, CIMB, RHB, AmBank, Bank Islam, HSBC Amanah, OCBC, UOB, Standard Chartered, BNP Paribas, Mizuho, and the insurers and takaful operators among them, plus the broader Malaysian financial sector preparing National Sustainability Reporting Framework (NSRF) disclosures aligned to IFRS S1 and S2.
What do the NSRF Guidance Documents add?
They are practical implementation guidance for the NSRF, the framework the SC launched on September 24, 2024 that made Malaysia the first ASEAN economy to mandate IFRS S1 and S2 nationally. The documents address the reporting pain points JC3 itself named: risk and opportunity assessments, strategy disclosures, and the use of metrics and targets, with the stated aim of making sustainability-related disclosures more robust, consistent, comparable and purposeful. The guidance is available through the SC NSRF page and the JC3 guidelines and toolkits.
The guidance is non-binding supervisory support, not a new policy document, and it complements the work of the Advisory Committee on Sustainability Reporting (ACSR). Hands-on capacity-building programmes begin in October 2026. For banks, insurers and takaful operators already inside the NSRF phased rollout, the documents are the operational bridge between the ISSB standard and a defensible first disclosure.
How does the ASEAN Taxonomy decision reshape the Malaysia Taxonomy?
JC3 members agreed to fully adopt the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance as the foundation of the Malaysia Taxonomy, the convergence of BNM's Climate Change and Principle-based Taxonomy (CCPT, 2021) and the SC's SRI Taxonomy (2022). BNM Assistant Governor and JC3 Co-Chair Madelena Mohamed framed the choice as one of applicability: a taxonomy is effective only if applied consistently, and the ASEAN base is meant to reduce operational burden for firms with cross-border trade while improving regional interoperability, consistency and comparability.
The path is staged. JC3 will develop practical guidance and tools tailored for local implementation, run a pilot with selected members, then move to full adoption for reporting in 2028. The pilot is designed to surface implementation challenges before the reporting deadline. This is a direction decision, not the final published Malaysia Taxonomy: the technical screening criteria and the full reporting architecture remain ahead.
What should exposed institutions do now?
Three actions follow directly from the statement. First, integrate the NSRF Guidance Documents into FY2025 and FY2026 disclosure preparation, particularly for Group 1 Main Market issuers (market cap at least RM 2 billion) already reporting under IFRS S2 climate-first and moving to full IFRS S1/S2 from FY2027. Second, begin internal mapping of financed activities against the ASEAN Taxonomy structure, since the Malaysia Taxonomy will inherit that architecture and the 2028 reporting deadline leaves limited lead time after the pilot. Third, track the pilot cohort's findings, which JC3 will use to refine the framework.
| Item | What changed | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| NSRF Guidance Documents | Issued for banks, insurers, takaful operators; address risk, strategy, metrics disclosures | Capacity-building from October 2026 |
| Malaysia Taxonomy base | ASEAN Taxonomy adopted as foundation; supersedes standalone CCPT/SRI convergence track | Pilot, then full reporting in 2028 |
| Climate data platform | JC3 to explore a centralised climate- and nature-related data platform | Exploratory, no date set |
Separately, JC3 noted further progress under the Climate Finance Innovation Lab (CFIL), where a second cohort of 22 projects seeking RM 1.73 billion in funding will enter a structured accelerator with the United Nations Global Compact Network Malaysia, Brunei and Cambodia. The JC3 Journey to Zero conference (JC3 J20) is set for September 28 and 29, 2026 at Sasana Kijang.
Take advantage of this real-time watch
For compliance and sustainability leads, the concrete next steps are narrow: confirm which NSRF group applies to your entity, embed the new guidance documents in the current disclosure cycle before the October capacity-building window, and start a gap assessment of your CCPT classification data against the ASEAN Taxonomy categories so the 2028 Malaysia Taxonomy reporting does not arrive unprepared. Obsidian surfaces these Malaysian sustainable-finance developments the moment BNM, the SC or JC3 publish them, through per-jurisdiction monitoring tuned to the frameworks in your scope.
