Our final session on Managing Information in a Post-Truth Era was moderated by Tara Joseph, President of AmCham Hong Kong and distinguished panelists includes Richard Hornick, Director of Overseas Partnership Programs for the Center for News Literacy, Stony Brook University, Melissa Idris, Executive Producer for the Morning Run show, BFM 89.9 and Juergen Keitel, Chief Global Affairs Development Officer, Air Asia.

Social Media has made companies hypervigilant but the emergence of the alternative facts is now a new reality that corporate communications have to navigate. Social media has also changed the dynamic for journalism. Facts have become less influential in shaping public opinion than appealing to emotion and personal belief and that is how post-truth era works. The panel discussed how the post-truth era affects businesses and how businesses can manage the information to their advantage.

Organisations and the people should be educated with critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of information. Every new technology requires new literacy and people should investigate information instead of simply consuming, verify information before sharing and be responsible social media users.

Social media also pose a reputational risk to organisations if they do not teach their people to manage the information. It can also provide a great opportunity and drive businesses including for branding, products and the service industry as an enabler for them to connect directly with consumers.

Consumer-based companies have to be in the proactive, reactive and active mode in facing social media. This includes, having a trained team, a 24-hour digital communication centre, right internal process to rectify the messages and respond quickly with transparency.  Key to it is at all levels, from the top to the operational level to be social media savvy. Messages should be simple and straightforward while employing empathy and compassion when dealing with consumers’ complaints.

The media profession is also challenged by the noises in social media. Thus, it is important to focus and filter through the noises and keep to what is important, which are the root causes of the subject discussed.

Our moderator for this session was Steven Westervelt, Associate Director, Control Risk-South East Asia alongside with his distinguished group of panelists comprising of Datuk Zainal Amanshah, CEO, InvestKL, Lynn (D’Silva) Cinelli, Public Policy & Government Relations, MSD International, Datuk Mohd. Rauf Nasir, Country President, Motorola Malaysia, Nelson Samuel, Director, Foreign Investment Promotion Division, MIDA, Amarjeet Singh, Partner, Malaysia Tax Leader, Malaysia TPC Leader, Ernst & Young and Dato’ Shamsiah binti Kamaruddin, Director General, Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO).

The topic of discussion aims to look at the different factors involved in attracting foreign investments into the region. It will also allow us to have a rough idea of where the region is headed and perhaps, what needs to be done to be attractive in terms of FDI. 

U.S. remains one of top investors in the region with Singapore being the favourite destination.  A steady growth of 5.4% in terms of investment in this region is expected in 2018. whereby manufacturing and services sector is where a bulk of these investments are injected into. Both Malaysia and Singapore remain the top services sector in the ASEAN region and more than 80% of U.S. and Australian based companies are expected to further invest in the ASEAN region. ASEAN remains a hot spot when it comes to FDI’s. Even with the tax rate cuts in the U.S., a large number of U.S. based MNC’s would remain in the ASEAN market.

The long history of U.S. based MNC’s presence in Malaysia continues to be healthy. Interestingly, however, Malaysia is witnessing a new wave of companies setting up their regional hub in KL. There are various reasons to KL being a preferred choice for FDI’s from MNC’s. Market access remains the top reason. It also has a proven track record, hosting multiple MNC’s operations over a century which denotes market stability.

KL’s ecosystem which is comprised of talent, connectivity and infrastructure are vital factors that will continue to attract FDI’s.  Additionally, an increase in the quality of life and lifestyle, put together with the ease of doing business in KL will definitely be amongst strong reasons for Malaysia to experience continuous FDI’s.

One of the breakout session on Tech in Health was moderated by Hasnul Nadzrin Shah, Director – Government and Regulatory Affairs IBM Malaysia and the panelists includes  Christopher Hall, Head of Health Solutions, Fitbit, APAC, Sainthan Satyamoorthy, Chief Corporate Solutions Officer, AIA, Pang Yee Beng, Senior Vice President – Commercial Business, South Asia and Korea, Dell EMC and Jonathan Collard, VP Government Affairs, Asia Pacific, Johnson & Johnson.

Workforce mobility and rising healthcare costs are challenges to most companies. Companies and Governments also face challenges in the short and long terms as populations age and the workforce gains more mobility. Technology and innovation in healthcare are providing solutions that can address these concerns and sprawling talent pools and manage critical areas for both the public and private sector.

Three issues raised were Tech in Health as it applies to corporate wellness, convergence of healthcare in treatment and curative and, how to protect sensitive data privacy. Cost of healthcare is a concern to Governments, employers and to the individuals. Technology plays an important role to address this concern and the pace of digital innovation will transform the healthcare system and how people manage their health.

Corporate wellness programs can help to increase productivity, avoid cost of healthcare treatment and create a healthy workforce. It will succeed when made a culture in the workplace.

As we know, data is the new power and in the hands of the right people, with technology, it can provide big data analysis of health patterns and trends that can help in prevention of sickness. There must be a balance between technology that is used and policy on data privacy. The data will be of no use to the individual if it is kept and not shared, including with healthcare professionals.

Dr. Sukudhew Singh, former senior official at Bank Negara moderated this session alongside with a group of panelists, Gopi Ganesalingam, Vice President – Enterprise Development, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) Global Acceleration & Innovation Network (GAIN) and Jeroen Kok, Executive Director, Head of Treasury Services Malaysia and Vietnam, JPMorgan.

FinTech is technology in the financial innovation impacting every sector in the economy and the financial sector is one of the most regulated. Regulators are cautious because a disruption in the financial sector affects not just the financial sector but also the economy. While financial institutions or FinTech innovators are enthusiastic about innovation, regulators are concern with fraud, scam, data security, money laundering, tax evasion.

It is important for FinTech innovators to realise that when it comes to the financial systems, the pillar supporting the financial system is public confidence. Without that, it is very difficult to have a sustainable, viable financial system.

MDEC champions digital economy in Malaysia and contributes 18.2 percent of Malaysia’s GDP. One of the things MDEC would like to do this year is to open a FinTech Centre in Kuala Lumpur where they want to have specialised accelerators, invite mentors, entrepreneurs on board. They would like to ideate together and to create a sandbox environment.

JPMorgan, on the other hand, is present in 14 countries and they spend about USD9.6 billion a year on technology. The innovation in this area, there is nothing new about financial technology but the pace of that innovation has rapidly increased. They see a lot of these retail components bubbling up in essentially in corporate requirements. So a lot of their investments are geared towards optimising transaction banking for corporate customers and financial institutions.

In summary, disruptive innovation is impacting the financial industry value chain from payments and billing technology, retail and consumer banking, insurance, money transfer and remittance, blockchain, artificial intelligence and banking infrastructure, not to mention cybersecurity, the list goes on. China, India and many players are making their presence
known in what was a traditional arena. What lies ahead and what pathways are countries, companies and entrepreneurs laying down.

This session brings together a panel of Ambassadors in the region, The Honorable Kamala Shirin Lakhdhir, U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia, The Honorable Sung Kim, Ambassador to the Philippines,

The Honorable Kurt Tong, Consul General to Hong Kong and Macau and The Honorable Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath, Charge d’Affaires to Singapore moderated by Siobhan Das, AMCHAM Executive Director.

How American companies can help the US government move forward in this Asean region? It calls for understanding the unintended consequences of government changes and presenting it back to the government.

Besides the commitment to ensure a fair and reciprocal relationship between the US and other countries, concerns were also raised about trade deficits, sanctions on North Korea and challenges in the US-China relations which is leading to a trade war. The panelists provided insights into their respective country’s perspective, strengths and weaknesses and recognised that they will be operating in a competitive environment. Perseverance and patience are part of the solutions advocated besides raising the standards to maintain U.S.’s lead position in the world and working together to bring back the message to Washington.

Ambassador Kamala, who has been here for 14 months, said, “The most important thing she received from US firms here has been information and perspective.” She urged for comments to be forwarded as soon as possible as it takes time to assist and engage with the government.

Ambassador Sung, had the opportunity to work with the AMCHAM Korea, Tokyo and the Philippines and experienced tremendous coordination, cooperation and communications between the AMCHAMs and the embassy.

Ambassador Kurt, believes that two-way street communication is absolutely important and has an extraordinary close relationship with AMCHAM in Hong Kong (HK). According to Kurt, US is the largest and best economy in the world, the best people, most diverse, best technology but it is challenging environment out there. So, we need to raise our game and push really hard with strong ideas in an increasingly competitive world.

When the Americans first came to this region, it was not the consuls and ambassadors who led the way. It was the traders who came and sold ice to the region. American businesses have always led the way for us to this region, said Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath.

The narrative is as we go into the future, we are working together, the government and the private sector, to continue to chart a future for American presence in the ASEAN region.

Sridharan Nair, Managing Partner PwC Malaysia & Territory Senior Partner of the PwC SEAPEN Region had the privilege of delivering the first session of the Summit on the topic The Asian Century, but which Asia? What does the future hold and what are some things we need to ponder upon? There is a significant increase in infrastructure in the region driven by the nations themselves to support the growth of economies. Under China’s own Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI), there’s a significant amount of outbound infrastructure investment while India has a large construction boom that is happening. Although China’s BRI and government’s spending plans will support the robust growth, we expect some of these to run into implementation problems as they get into the construction stage.

Where do US businesses sit in this whole scheme? Are you represented and a participant as far as BRI is concerned? China is very aggressive with this plan, eyeing the high-speed rail project in Malaysia and other port projects in various parts of SEA. Are other nations sufficiently present and participating in these initiatives as well? Our view is that while China is a dominant player in the region and a large trade partner for many countries, this is not an absolute given.

The region is still open for business with anyone. There have been long historical relations with nations like the U.S. and the UK. There is no reason to suggest that nations will exclusively do business with one country as opposed to another. So, it is open for business. It is a question of how countries and businesses localise, look at works in the region, adapt and compete against one another to fulfill the potential in this region and broader Asia as well.

Ending with a quote from Jack Welch, GE former chairman, and CEO, Nair says Welch’s point is “You can’t reach a point of maturity when there’s so much potential with that sort of size and consumer needs and spending”.

Nair’s final remarks for international businesses on “How do they position themselves?”: They need to be patient enough to ride out the short-term socio-economic and political ups and downs that will inevitably occur in emerging markets as they move towards maturity.

So, patience is part of that and being able to localise and adapt. Failure to engage these markets because you are risk averse to these ups and downs will eventually mean you missed out on the opportunities where it is expected the bulk of the future economic growth in the world will come about.