Dr. Zeti Akhtar Aziz, who turned 77 on August 27, is sitting pretty today as co-chair of the Board of Governors Asia School of Business, established in collaboration with MIT Sloan. For a Wharton-trained economist and award-winning former Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, she deserves the honour and relative ease that go with the position.
Dr. Aziz was appointed Acting Governor of Malaysia’s central bank in the thick of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998. Two years later, through her sheer demonstration of competence and patent commitment to hard work and solutions, she clinched the substantive post of Governor.
She soon vindicated Reformist Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s confidence in her by assisting him to resolve her country’s currency crisis and precarious financial problems. She was the first woman to be appointed to such a strategic position in the country and remains the longest-serving central bank Governor in the country’s history. It’s no surprise she championed gender equality, using her career and success in the polity as references. While at the job, she introduced a dozen fresh pieces of legislation that not only liberalised but also returned the country’s financial system to stability.
East Asia will not forget her indelible contributions to the work of the task force that inaugurated the cooperation of central banks in the region. As a founding member of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and co-chair of the Financial Stability Board Consultative Councils for Asia, her influence spanned the entire region.
Perhaps her most enduring contribution to global finance is the growth of Islamic finance. She was active in the creation of the Islamic Finance Services Board, the debate on Shariah compliance of Islamic financial products and services, and the inauguration of the world’s first ever sovereign Sukuk (Islamic bond) by Malaysia. Islamic finance currently accounts for more than 11 percent of the volume of operations in the country’s financial system.
A couple of years after stepping down from the Governor’s perch in Bank Negara, the Royal Patron for Malaysia’s Islamic Finance Initiative, His Royal Highness Sultan Nazrin Muizzudd in Shah, conferred on Dr. Aziz the Royal Award for Islamic Finance. The citation lauded “her achievements and exceptional leadership in expanding the frontiers of Islamic finance in the domestic and global financial arenas.”
Much earlier on, not long into her 16-year tenure at Malaysia’s central bank, Dr. Aziz earned the reputation of a tough regulator. Yet she is renowned as a focused intellectual. Her PhD dissertation on Capital Flows and their Implications on Policy resonates with diverse segments of the financial world. And that is not surprising; Dr. Aziz is the daughter of renowned Royal Prof. Ungku Aziz Ungku Abdul Hamid, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Malaysia.
For her numerous contributions to exchange rate management, capital markets, and global finance in general, an international publication awarded Dr. Aziz its 2005 Central Bank Governor Prize. She had so impressed modern Malaysia’s globally recognised builder, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who appointed her into the Council of Eminent Persons in his second tour of duty as Prime Minister when he returned to power in 2018, after a 15-year retirement from the same office. Expectedly, she served as the government’s distinguished adviser on economic and financial matters.
