Verity journal

Forbes recently published an article about how leaders that regularly demonstrate integrity, adaptability, vision, accountability and communication skills can effectively lead their teams to greatness. On top of these generic leadership traits, Bank Negara Malaysia’s issuance of its Fit and Proper Criteria is to ensure that competent and trustworthy leadership is part of the Malaysian corporate governance framework.

The Fit and Proper Criteria specifically defines key responsible persons within an organisation as members of the board, CEO, senior officers or senior management, directors and the Shariah committee – or anyone that has primary or significant responsibilities for key functions that are integral to the integrity and competence of financial institutions (FIs).

FIs will now be liable by law if they fail to perform due diligence and periodically vet their key responsible persons in their organisation in the following areas:

• Probity, personal integrity and reputation– To meet the requirement, key responsible persons need to demonstrate attributes such as honesty, integrity, diligence, independence of mind and fairness.
• Competence and capability– Key responsible persons need the necessary skills, experience, ability and commitment to carry out the role.
• Financial integrity– Key responsible persons should be in good financial health.

This is where Verity Intelligence can help. Through periodical background screening, Verity Intelligence can verify if someone has met, and continuously meets all the requirements by checking records of Civil Litigation, Criminality, local and global integrity checks, observing Financial Credit and Bankruptcy status, determining if there are any conflict of business and prior directorships, verifying their education records and performing a Malaysian Regulatory Check.

As mentioned in our previous article on 3rd January, background screening is now a required corporate governance tool to determine the suitability of key responsible persons and assure that FIs are led by persons of integrity, credibility and competence.

Stay tuned as we will be discussing more in our next blogpost, or visit verityintel.com or our original articles.