Corporate Secretaries Have Critical Role In ESG Reporting

By Christine Lim

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 (Bernama) -- Corporate secretaries, as the gatekeepers of governance, have a critical role in guiding companies to strengthen governance frameworks to make that transition towards sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting.

Corporate Secretaries International Association (CSIA) president Datuk Suseela Menon said a priority as president was to work with appropriate research-based organisations to provide more thought leadership support to company secretaries and governance professionals.

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Suseela is also the Malaysian Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (MAICSA) past president and council member.

“Both MAICSA and CSIA do a lot of work to help organisations, through their company secretaries who also serve mostly as governance professionals to drive sustainable practices,” she told Bernama in an interview.

She emphasised that CSIA  has partnered with Trialogue, a South Africa-based sustainability research organisation, on the latest thought leadership project aimed at developing the capacity of corporate secretaries and governance professionals.

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“This is to provide a deeper level of understanding and context to empower them to prioritise sustainability on the board agenda, transform and strengthen existing approaches, and embed ESG practices in the organisation,” she noted.

CSIA was incorporated in Geneva and launched in Paris in March 2010 under the auspices of the International Finance Corporation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as the Global Voice of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals.

Today, its membership exceeds 100,000 corporate secretaries and governance professionals across four continents.

Suseela highlighted that top global fund managers and investment houses focus heavily on companies’ governance and ESG practices, in addition to financial performance before making investment decisions.

“This has been their practice for some time now, and they have become more stringent over time,” she added.

According to Suseela, Malaysia has pretty solid corporate governance laws, regulations, and codes.

“Our authorities are doing a good job in this respect. As president of CSIA, I have access to the standards of other member countries and international governance standards. I have even met up with some large international organisations during my tenure,” she said.

Suseela said CSIA plans to develop global governance standards, which will be kept as generic as possible to be adapted by countries to suit local conditions and circumstances.

“This will help our member countries and those countries that do not yet have formal regulations in this regard. MAICSA is a member of CSIA, and therefore, benefits from the international scenario that CSIA has to offer,” she said.

Suseela, who was also recently elected as MAICSA representative to the Council of the Chartered Governance Institute (CGI), United Kingdom, said she will like to see CGI’s competency framework implemented and believes this will be good for raising the standards and profile of MAICSA graduates.

“I will see if I can integrate the work in governance and ESG being done by both CGI and CSIA to achieve better efficiencies and knowledge sharing among our members,” she noted.

Suseela said she will be attending her first CGI meeting in Hong Kong in early October. She will give more thought to the strategies needed to improve the profile of corporate secretaries and other governance professionals.

“We must always work for our members, locally and internationally, in the context of the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous governance landscape that corporate secretaries and governance professionals have to navigate daily,” she said.

The first lady executive director in the UMW Group, where she served 30 years, Suseela also sat on the boards of several companies in the group, including the Perodua group of companies. 

-- BERNAMA