ContextWelcoming address of Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), delivered by Marzunisham Omar, Deputy Governor, at the Industry Appreciation Dinner commemorating the 30th anniversary of FAST, Kuala….
Why it mattersLooks at how Malaysia's bond-market infrastructure must evolve with analytics and AI as it celebrates three decades of operation.
- Markets evolve, so infrastructure built for the past will not fit the next thirty years.
- Infrastructure that only processes transactions limits better decision-making.
- Risk monitoring must keep up with a more sophisticated market.
- Evolve the infrastructure alongside the market.
- Use analytics and AI to deliver richer insights and transparency.
- Strengthen risk monitoring through the next-generation FAST+ platform.
Read the speech summary
1. Thirty years of an invisible backbone
Marking 30 years of FAST, the electronic system Bank Negara Malaysia uses to issue and auction debt and money-market securities, Governor Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour recalled that it replaced a paper process and became a pillar of the local bond and sukuk market. He argued that market infrastructure, though unseen, is what lets savings reach productive investment.
2. What it made possible
The market has grown to about RM2.35 trillion by mid-2026, among the region's largest in local currency, and companies raised over RM377 billion through bonds between January 2025 and June 2026. Sukuk now make up more than 60% of the market, with over RM1.4 trillion outstanding, and Malaysia issued the first sustainable and responsible investment sukuk in 2015 and the first green sukuk in 2017. The system also kept markets working through stress and the pandemic.
3. The next generation
Because AI, investor expectations and interconnected markets are changing finance, the central bank is building FAST+, meant to be smarter (analytics and risk monitoring), better linked across issuers, investors and regulators, and open to tokenised and programmable instruments without sacrificing safety. With a new securities depository system soft-launched on 25 September 2026, it will support issuing, settling and holding tokenised bonds and sukuk.