This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 7, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Conglomerate Sime Darby Bhd was crowned the winner at PwC Malaysia’s Building Trust Awards 2017 last night for its efforts in building trust with its stakeholders, while telecommunications group Axiata Group Bhd was named runner-up.

Established in 2015, this is the second awards organised as part of PwC’s Building Trust programme. It aims to encourage Corporate Malaysia to prioritise trust-building in their business agenda.

PwC Malaysia managing partner Sridharan Nair (Sri) says the winning companies had shown that building trust begins with a conscious effort to engage important stakeholders. He added that the winning companies had also demonstrated a keen understanding of how trust can promote business growth.

“The time is ripe for businesses to close the trust gap and rebuild faith in institutions, as the world at large continues to be weighed down by declining levels of trust in governments, institutions and businesses,” said Sri.

“Since the start of our Building Trust programme in 2015, we have been making efforts to encourage corporates to look at trust through a different lens — as an asset that can be measured, managed and nurtured to bring tangible gains to businesses in an environment of constant change,” he added.

PwC Malaysia also had Special Mentions for three companies that were recognised for their commendable efforts in building trust in various phases of evaluation.

In particular, Sime Darby was given a Special Mention for excelling in PwC’s Integrated Reporting Framework benchmarking analysis, while Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd shone in the PwC Trustworthy Organisation Model assessment. Nestle (Malaysia) Bhd did well in the PwC Malaysia’s “Trust in Business” public poll.

The Building Trust Awards employs a distinctive way of measuring trust, going beyond the financials of the companies assessed.

It assesses the performance of public listed companies in their corporate reporting as well as how they are perceived by their stakeholders, including customers and investors. 

However, the Awards is not based on nominations or submissions by the companies. Rather, companies are selected both by what they say about themselves (via their reporting) and the public perception of their effort. 

The companies are then evaluated by PwC before a final shortlist of 20 is presented for face-to-face deliberation by an independent panel of judges that comprises regulators and “thought leaders” in corporate reporting and building trust issues.

For the 2017 Building Trust Awards, the panel is led by Awards chief judge Sir David Tweedie (chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Valuation Standards Council and past chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board).

Other members are former Bank Negara Malaysia governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz; Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood, the under secretary-general of Partnerships of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; and Faris Hadad-Zervos, who is country manager and head of the World Bank Group Global Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia.

“I am pleased with the results of these Awards. At the judges’ meeting to deliberate on the winners, my fellow judges and I agreed that companies in Malaysia are making progress in building trust,” said Tweedie.

“Among the 20 companies which were selected as finalists, we observed several best practices in their reporting, including clear disclosure of strategic priorities, linked to quantifiable KPIs and a broad overview of the business outlook. This is certainly encouraging, reflecting a corporate reporting market that is maturing,” he added.