Maybank closed out its five-year sustainability commitments in 2025 having met all of them and, in the case of the headline financing target, having beaten it more than twice over.
The MYR80 billion ($19.7 billion) sustainable finance goal set in 2021 was passed a year early; by the end of 2025 cumulative mobilisation stood at MYR176.12 billion, with MYR60.95 billion in the final year alone against an annual target of MYR29.5 billion – figures that have been through PwC’s limited assurance every year since 2022.
The other three commitments closed out in similar fashion. Maybank reached 2.95 million households across Asean against a target of two million, with 829,207 added in 2025 and lower income bottom 40% households making up 86% of them.
Employees logged more than two million sustainability hours, twice the target, and delivered 1,489 significant SDG-related outcomes against a goal of 1,000. On its own emissions, the bank cut Scope 1 and 2 by 57.8% against its 2019 baseline, narrowly ahead of plan and on track for carbon neutrality in 2030.
Structuring the region’s firsts
The deal record is where Maybank’s standing in Asean is clearest. It was joint sustainability structuring adviser on YTL PowerSeraya’s SGD500 million ($387 million) transition financing, part of a SGD1.2 billion facility for a 600 megawatt hydrogen-ready gas turbine – Singapore’s first transition finance deal aligned to the Singapore-Asia Taxonomy and the first executed under Maybank’s own transition finance framework.
It acted as sole sustainability structuring adviser on Johor Plantations Group’s MYR200 million sustainability sukuk, which is the first for the palm oil industry anywhere, and was joint green loan coordinator on WG Data Hub’s MYR7.5 billion and $1.7 billion dual-currency green facility, the first Islamic syndicated green financing for data centres in Malaysia.
Employees logged more than two million sustainability hours, twice the target, and delivered 1,489 significant SDG-related outcomes against a goal of 1,000
Structuring work of this kind now sits close to the centre of the bank’s franchise: Maybank is sole sustainability structuring adviser on three of the three published transition finance frameworks in Malaysia and three of five across Asean. Its influence extends into rule setting. At the request of the Securities Commission Malaysia and the central bank, Maybank chaired the working group that produced the national sustainable and transition finance guidance for the Malaysian industry, published in December.
Where the bank is more exposed, it does not hide. Its aluminium portfolio’s emissions intensity rose to 3.40 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per tonne against a 2.36 baseline, a restatement rather than a deterioration in client performance. In power, however, the direction is unambiguous: portfolio emissions intensity fell 15% to 376 kg CO₂ equivalent/megawatt hour, renewable exposure rose from 27% to 31%, and fossil fuel exposure fell 18% to MYR9.4 billion.
On the social side, RISE, the group’s entrepreneurship programme for people with disabilities and low-income households, has reached 51,183 participants since 2014, of whom 39,955 are disabled people or their carers, and lifted 13,421 above the national poverty line. A University of Nottingham validation found 73% sustained their income growth beyond three months.
Ratings agencies have registered the shift. MSCI upgraded Maybank from AA to AAA in 2025, and Sustainalytics moved it from medium to low risk.
