and coordinated response to deliver meaningful impact to stakeholders is urgent and paramount. the flood last year provided a harrowing glimpse of the consequences of fragmented actions. delayed evacuation responses and inefficient donation allocation to relief centres resulted in lost lives and wastages. applying lessons learnt to achieve desired outcomes for the financial sector – which is finance for all, finance for transformation and finance for sustainability – requires leaders to have foresight in identifying collaborative 1 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches opportunities across industries and work together to develop impactful and scalable solutions. two areas i wish to highlight in which the bank sees room for the industry to demonstrate immediacy and act together. first, mainstreaming value - based intermediation ( vbi ). the islamic finance industry has demonstrated commendable progress through the vbi community of practitioners ( cop ) in developing frameworks and guidance that support the implementation of vbi. this momentum should continue into other implementation areas such as'collaborative pilot'solutions, and impact monitoring and reporting with even greater rigour. as envisioned in the blueprint, collaboration should also be extended beyond islamic finance as vbi principles are universally applicable to the whole financial sector. for stakeholders of financial institutions, these initiatives should only be measured as " accomplished " once the benefits of value - based finance are genuinely experienced and felt, especially by financial consumers. to achieve this, business strategies, operations and manpower must be aligned to impact - driven corporate value intent. finance solutions goes beyond providing economic benefits, it extends into delivering tangible social and environmental benefits. another area is open data. a multi - stakeholder collaboration involving the financial industry, government agencies and even the third sector such as ngos is crucial in advancing open data arrangements. this year, open data initiatives will focus on identification of high priority use cases by the industry, which can then be immediately worked on together. through initiatives such as vbi and open data, financial institutions can augment its contribution to wider stakeholders in promoting economic and social developments. the third imperative, ( and this is a viewpoint close to heart ), is that value - based leadership requires empathy. empathy is deeply rooted in the fundamental values of shariah, such as ihsan, fairness and mutuality. at its core, islamic finance seeks to prevent harm and promote the attainment of benefits to improve lives and livelihood. this includes alleviating hardships experienced by customers through funding, investment and protection solutions as well as making improvements in how customers

our competitive advantage in islamic financial markets and move beyond our previous focus of advisory and promoting primary market issuances and move up to build an end - to - end value chain capability – where we should also focus on secondary market trading, settlement and custody services. but this aspiration of ours could only be achieved if there is a collaborative effort between the industry and the authorities. one such platform is the malaysia international islamic financial centre ( mifc ) initiative that comprises a community network of the country ’ s financial and market regulators, including bank negara malaysia ( central bank of malaysia ), securities commission malaysia, labuan financial services authority and bursa malaysia ( kuala lumpur stock exchange ) ; government ministries and agencies together with industry participation from the banking, takaful, capital market institutions, human capital development institutions and professional services companies which are participating and working collaboratively in the field of islamic finance. the creation of international islamic liquidity management corporation ( iilm ) recently was the outcome of the high level taskforce on liquidity management that was formed by the islamic financial services board ( ifsb ). it is a collaborative effort to develop a liquidity framework that can provide widely acceptable liquidity solutions to islamic financial institutions, to promote better liquidity management. iilm will be an issuer of shariah compliant financial instruments that are highly liquid and tradable in the secondary financial market. this is an important infrastructure capacity building since it would expand the scope of business for islamic finance globally and was achieved through collaborative effort. another initiative is the creation of a sukuk investment fund – foreign currency funds to be disbursed to selected islamic fund management companies ( ifmcs ) to invest primarily in foreign currency sukuk issued out of malaysia. the fund would support the proliferation on the buy side for the issuance of sukuk out of malaysia, besides providing a platform for the islamic fund management industry, including start - ups to build their track record in managing foreign currencies fund denominated. complementary to this initiative is the creation of a malaysian - based sukuk index for foreign currency and also an extension of our domestic settlement capabilities to include foreign currency securities. this is the moment when we need the cooperation from the private sector in support of government ’ s measures to generate business and to stimulate the economic growth. there are enormous opportunities for the industry to benefit from these initiatives. the strengthening and the transformation of the financial sector contributed by financial deregulation, opening of