This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 25, 2019 - March 31, 2019

THREE years after she stepped down as governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, a post she held for 16 years, Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz is in the thick of things again.

Meeting up with her in her office on the fourth floor of Balai PNB, The Edge finds Zeti looking her vintage self, dressed in an elegant baju kurung in one of her signature colours, dark blue.

Now 72, Zeti emerged from “retirement” last year when she was made a member of the Council of Eminent Persons, set up after the historic victory by Pakatan Harapan in the 14th general election.

What she did not expect, she says, was being offered the post of chairman of PNB. “When I left the bank (Bank Negara), I felt it was the best position that I could have had because it provided me with an opportunity to make a contribution. I was by then 70, I didn’t think that I would take on another position.”

But fate had other plans for her. “I was overseas when I got the call and I said, ‘Can it wait until I come back?’ They said ‘No, we’re going to call you tomorrow for your decision.’ I reflected on it and accepted.” She took over from Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar on July 1.

And Zeti found herself wearing many hats and working at a hectic pace again. She was kept on her toes with her work as PNB group chairman, chairman of Sime Darby Property, board member of the Asia Business School and so on.

At the heart of it all, Zeti comes across as still the quintessential central banker, peppering the interview with anecdotes from her Bank Negara days. This is to be expected, given that her stint in the central bank was for more than three decades. She joined the bank in 1985 as deputy manager of the economics department.

Zeti acknowledges that it has been challenging “juggling the hats”. After all, when she left Bank Negara, never in her wildest dreams did she think she would be serving in government again. In fact, she had already decided three years before stepping down as governor that she did not want to renew her tenure for another five years.

“I had done everything I had wanted to do, so it was time for me to go and I prepared the bank for that for at least three years.”

In fact, since leaving the central bank, she received invitations from all over the world to speak at conferences and panels, something she enjoyed doing. “I met my old friends in the central banking community and it was great. And on the home front, I helped out with the education arm of the bank, where I still had the Asia School of Business and the leadership centre, and INCEIF (International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance). I was happy with that arrangement.”

Her focus now, of course, is PNB. “I have reduced my speaking engagements. I won’t accept new subject areas, so I’ve slowed down on that front. And the business school, it’s just started, so we’re very excited about what we’re delivering to the world and I will support it for a little while.”

If her stint at the central bank is any indication, Zeti will run PNB with the same determination — to do her best in whatever she does. Throughout her career as a central banker, there was not a day that she did not work hard and intensely, she explains. “I always had a great sense of purpose about what had to be achieved and I was very ambitious about what had to be achieved as well.”

And it is this palpable sense of purpose that comes across when she talks about her plans for PNB, going forward.

How has her transition from central banker to “fund manager” been so far, so to speak?

“Not a difficult one,” Zeti replies, explaining that there are several parallels between the central bank and PNB. Both, she says, are managers of large funds. “At the central bank, of course, it was managing the reserves … we had about US$100 billion equivalent. In PNB, the fund is about RM300 billion. The central bank is at the frontier of the investment of the reserves and, I should say, it is as good as any international investment bank. We reached that level in terms of asset allocation, in terms of risk management, in terms of managing liquidity. So, in that respect, there are many similarities.”

A difference, she notes, is that Bank Negara has multiple mandates whereas in PNB, it is a single one: to enhance the wealth of the unitholders.

Zeti joined PNB with high expectations. “This organisation was chaired from the beginning by the pioneer, Tun Ismail Ali, and he had the highest standards of excellence and integrity. So, PNB already has those values.”

She believes that the PNB she has inherited has the potential to achieve a higher level of performance. “It was the same with Bank Negara; when I became the governor, it was a good organisation. It was already up there. It had good talent, it was well run. Back then, we could really be ambitious. We wanted to be at the frontier of central banking, so we did three rounds of organisational transformation during the 16 years to improve ourselves in terms of governance, risk management, talent development and management, and original technology to become a knowledge and performance-based organisation.”

At PNB, she believes that putting the right culture in place is all-important for the company to move in the right direction amid a very challenging environment.

Zeti does not have a time frame for her stint at PNB but she assures us that she will continue to work as long as her health permits. “It depends on what I want to achieve and also on my health. I’m happy to do this because many [of our clients] are small unitholders. When you take on a position, you must know what your obligation is, and work towards achieving that mandate. So, if you know you can no longer do so, you should give way to someone else who can.”  

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