December 6, 2022
Bali – The ASEAN Exchanges –Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), Bursa Malaysia, Philippine Stock Exchange, The Stock Exchange of Thailand, Singapore Exchange (SGX Group), and Vietnam Exchange, had gathered in Bali for the 35th ASEAN Exchanges CEOs Meeting on last Friday (2/12). Hosted by IDX, the meeting aims to promote the synergy and collaboration among ASEAN Exchanges members through various initiatives.
Continuing the effort to address challenges around the availability of consistent and comparable Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data, and after finishing ASEAN Exchanges’ environmental core metrics in the previous CEOs Meeting, the six Exchanges have agreed on a voluntary common set of ASEAN Exchanges social core metrics.
The ASEAN Exchanges ESG Working Group (ESG WG) used World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) ESG metrics as the main reference for the activity. The ESG WG then performed a comparative analysis of every ASEAN Exchanges’ member social metrics and came up with the ASEAN Exchanges social core metrics recommendation as follows:
| No. | Topics | Metrics |
| 1 | Gender Diversity | Percentage of enterprise headcount held by men and women |
| 2 | Percentage of entry- and mid-level positions held by men and women | |
| 3 | Percentage of senior- and executive-level positions held by men and women | |
| 4 | Number of employee level (entry, mid, senior, executive) held by men and women by age group | |
| 5 | Employee Turnover | Percentage of year-over-year change for full-time employees |
| 6 | Non-Discrimination | Company policy regarding sexual harassment and/or non-discrimination |
| 7 | Injury Rate | Frequency of injury events relative to total workforce time or total number of serious accidents |
| 8 | Development & Training | Average training hours per employee |
| 9 | Human Rights | Company policy regarding human rights |
| 10 | Number of incidents regarding human rights abuse | |
| 11 | Child & Forced Labor | Company policy regarding child and/or forced labor |
| 12 | Temporary Worker Ratio | Total enterprise headcount held by contractors and/or consultants |
| 13 | Social and Community Investment | Total amount of corporate or group donations and community investments made to registered not-for-profit organizations |
Following the completion of the Environmental and Social parts of the metrics, the ESG WG will now focus on aligning the Governance metrics in order to finish the first set of draft ASEAN ESG metrics.
Last month, CEOs and representatives from four ASEAN Exchanges took part in the ASEAN Investment Summit in New York City. The event, organized in collaboration with FTSE Russell, provided ASEAN Exchanges an opportunity to promote investment in the ASEAN region to global leaders and investors through information and knowledge sharing on socio-economic topics and developments. The ASEAN Exchanges representatives also visited Bloomberg to discuss their plans and strategies to develop the ASEAN region.
ASEAN is the third largest trading block in the world after NAFTA and EU with consumer base of 680 million people, more than 100 million middle-class income societies with high investment aspirations, and growing number of Unicorns reaching 46 companies in 2022. ASEAN is becoming more economically connected as a result of ASEAN Vision 2040. Investment flows to ASEAN members have been resilient as it surged to the pre-pandemic levels, surging by 42 percent to reach US$174 billion in 2021, which reflects the attractiveness of the region’s economy to global investors. With a large market and solid regional integration, ASEAN remains a major FDI destination in the developing world and will play an essential role in driving global economic recovery.
Iman Rachman, President Director of IDX said “The relationship between ASEAN Exchanges is a long-standing one which always looks forward to working together to explore new initiatives in order to support the ASEAN capital market. The social core metrics agreed today and also the event collaboration with FTSE show that ASEAN Exchanges play an active role in developing ASEAN as a single asset class”.
