Making Sense of Money

UPDATES: Comparison of historical dividends between Amanah Saham Wawasan 2020, Amanah Saham Malaysia and Amanah Saham 1 Malaysia

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 10:01:00 +0000

Updates (as of 8 Nov, 2014): ASW2020 and AS1M FY 2014 dividend of 6.6 cents per unit.

Amanah Saham Wawasan 2020 (ASW 2020), Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM) and Amanah Saham 1 Malaysia (AS1M) are three of the most popular unit trusts funds from Perbadanan Nasional Berhad that are available for non-bumiputra. All these unit trust funds are fixed price funds at the price of RM 1.00. This means that you buy and sell at RM 1.00 irregardless of share market fluctuations.

ASW 2020 which was launched in 1996 is an equity income fund that is benchmarked against 3-months KLIBOR rate. ASM which was launched in year 2000 is an equity income fund that is benchmarked against 3-months KLIBOR rate. AS1M which was launched in year 2009 is an equity income fund that is benchmarked against average rate of 5-years government MGS bond.
Pre-year 2009, it seemed like ASW2020 outperformed ASM fund. However, since 2010, all three funds seemed to mirror each other in terms of performance even though the mandate, especially for AS1M, was slightly different. Moving forward, I expect the performance of these funds to trail each other, though, the returns is quite respectable in view of current low interest environment.

In summary, all these funds are behaving more like bonds with average returns of approximately 6% despite them being equity income funds. These funds will be suitable for those looking for stable and predictable returns over the long term that are far superior than the returns of fixed deposit rates and most of the bond funds.

Comparison of dividends between ASW 2020, ASM and AS1M

AIA A-Plus Med Schedule of Benefits & Premium Table

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 04:21:00 +0000

AIA A-Plus Med is the replacement medical insurance plan from AIA Malaysia, superceeding the previous medical insurance, AIA Excelcare Plus and Medicare Plus. AIA A-Plus Med o ffers beneﬁts that matches the offerings from other insurance companies' medical insurance plans.

In a nutshell, AIA A-Plus Med insurance plan offers:

Coverage until 100 years old.
Increasing annual limit (for Room & Board 150 and above): Initial annual limit will be increased by 5% every 2 years starting from the third policy year, for 20 policy years, provided that there is no claims or claims not exceeding RM5,000 over the last 2 policy years.
No lifetime limit.
Zero co-insurance and deductibles.
Hassle-free hospital admission card.
Options to include/children (up to max 4 children) into a single medical insurance plan.

AIA A-Plus Med Schedule of Benefits

AIA A-Plus Med Cost of Insurance - Male

AIA A-Plus Med Cost of Insurance - Female

AIA A-Plus Med Cost of Insurance - Insured Spouse

AIA A-Plus Med Cost of Insurance - Male Children

AIA A-Plus Med Cost of Insurance - Female Children

AIA A-Plus Med Cost of Insurance - Insured Family

To view the comparison of this medical plan with other leading medical cards in the market, please visit this article.

Disclaimer: The information published is for your reference only. Please refer to your insurance agent for the most up to date information.

AmPRS Funds Explained

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 03:00:00 +0000

AmInvest is the fifth private retirement scheme (PRS) provider in Malaysia that launched their PRS funds on 2 April, 2013. AmInvest PRS scheme will have 3 core funds, namely AmPRS Growth, AmPRS Moderate and AmPRS Conservative. In this article, I will elaborate on the conventional PRS funds.

AmPRS Growth Fund is targeting those investors below age of 40 years old or have high risk profile. This fund will mainly invest in combination of equities, REITs, fixed income and liquid assets. Up to a maximum 70% of the fund can be invested in equities in the Asia Pacific markets. Out of this 70% equities portion, a maximum 20% can be invested in REITS. A minimum 30% of the fund will be invested in fixed income assets while a minimum 1% will be retained in liquid assets.

AmPRS Moderate Fund is targeting those investors between the age of 40 - 50 years old or have moderate risk profile. This fund will mainly invest in combination of equities, REITs, fixed income and liquid assets. Up to a maximum 60% of the fund can be invested in equities in the Asia Pacific markets. Out of this 70% equities portion, a maximum 20% can be invested in REITS. A minimum 40% of the fund will be invested in fixed income assets while a minimum 1% will be retained in liquid assets.

AmPRS Conservative Fund is a fixed income fund with a small portion of equity investment, is meant for those over 50 years old or have low risk profile. Uo to 80% of the fund will be invested in fixed income, of which 20% of the NAV will be in money markets. Up to 20% of the remaining portion of the fund can be invested in local equities. A minimum 1% of the fund will be retained in liquid assets.

The summary of AmPRS funds information is available below:

Note: If you need to open the spreadsheet in another tab, click here.

In my opinion, there are better PRS choices out there as compared to AmPRS. The disadvantages of AmPRS funds can be listed as below:

High sales charge and switching fees of 3%, just as CIMB- Principal PRS.
AmInvest is not very well known for their equity funds performance, as compared to their bond funds.

To know more information about AmPRS offerings, please visit the official site. To understand the difference between PRS and RSP, please visit this link.

Impact of new BNM Rulings on Household Indebtness

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 03:00:00 +0000

Due to the rising household debts as compared to GDP in Malaysia, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) recently introduced new measures to further tighthen credit lending especially on housing and personal loans as follow:

Maximum tenure of 10 years for financing extended for personal use.
Maximum tenure of 35 years for financing granted for the purchase of residential and non-residential properties.
Prohibition on the offering of pre-approved personal financing products.

Now that we have these new measures, so what does it means to the people on the street? This is my opinion on the impact of new BNM rulings to the rakyat:

Housing loans will be less afforable to the property investors/buyers, especially for the younger investors/buyers. With the shorten loan period, monthly installment is expected to rise and affect debt-to-income ratio, which is probably one of the factor financial institutions take into considerations.
Hopefully, the new measure can cool down/reduce the property market speculations, especially those developments without DIBS. Personally, i still wonder why Malaysian government hasnt banned DIBS as done by Singapore government few years back. In my opinion, DIBS is one of the factor that push property prices to beyond the reach for most of the rakyat.
Reduced availability of personal loans. A lot of youngsters and people in the lower income brackets are taking personal loans to cover for daily expenses as well as paying off credit card debts. With the introduction of such new measures are going to be painful to those people affected, but i do agree that such measure is needed to instill better financial management for the youngsters.

In summary, the measures are good for long term financial stability of the country. No doubt that it's going to be painful for those affected, but it's necessary to bring down household debts. I guess people needs to get the basic fact right: you must spend less than what you earn!

Making Sense of Money is back online!

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 04:48:00 +0000

Dear readers,

My blog, Making Sense of Money, was blocked by Google and flagged as scam blog by their bots for the past 6 months. If you were my faithful readers, you will know that my blog is for sharing of financial topics for the good of general audience.

Few days ago, I received good news from Blogger that my blog has been reinstated. So, there you go, my blog is fully back online! I will try to update as much information on my blog articles as possible for missing out much of the financial news for the past 6 months.

Do drop by from time to time for the latest financial news and knowledge! Cheers!

Portfolio Rebalancing Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Apart from asset allocation decision, financial experts around the world are advocating periodic portfolio rebalancing to bring your investments portfolio that has deviated from the target asset allocation back in line. In short, portfolio rebalancing is the action of selling of high performing investments to buy lower performing investments, with the condition that the fundamentals of lower performing investments are still intact. While this logic deviates from normal human psycology, what portfolio rebalancing is doing is basically to sell high and buy low. With periodic portfolio adjustments, we can take advantage of the system to take profit devoid of our emotions in making investment decisions.

There are many strategies to do portfolio rebalancing that are employed by many experts. What I'm focusing in this article is on rebalancing of unit trust investments portfolio, i.e. cash, bond fund(s) and equity funds. Some of the portfolio rebalancing strategies recommended by the financial experts are as below:

Rebalancing by time frame: Most of the financial expert recommend that investors rebalance their investments portfolio at least once or twice a year. Investors can either rebalance in a fixed time frame, i.e. every June and December of the year; or rebalance according to market conditions. The latter strategy takes advantage of market volatility to sell high and buy low, i.e. selling off high performing investments when stock market is riding high and keep the proceeds in cash fund; and then use the cash fund to buy lower performing investments when the stock market is in the doldrum. This will only work if the investors are really experienced with market timing. Even then, there's no guarantee that the investors will get to sell off at the absolute high or buy at absolute low. Here's a web article which explains pretty well on rebalancing frequency.
Rebalance when asset allocation is diverted by certain percentage: Some other financial experts recommend that investors should rebalance their investments when their portfolio asset allocation is skewed by 5% or 10%. In short, this strategy involves the selling off of equity fund that has grown more than 5 - 10% than the target asset allocation, and use the proceeds to buy under performing other equity/bond/cash funds, and vice versa. The idea is to bring the asset allocation back to the initial target asset allocation.
Rebalance when certain funds achieve desired returns: Some investors take profit of their investments when predefined returns from the investments have been achieved. For example, if i have an equity fund with initial investment of RM 1000 and set the desired returns from this fund is 15%, then if the fund is performing exceptionally well over 15%, then i will take profit for this fund by selling off the profit portion, i.e. selling off RM 150 worth of unit trust while keeping the initial cost of investment in tact.
Combination of strategy 1 & 2: The remaining investors might rebalance using the combination of first and second strategy, i.e. by sellings of high performing investments and buy into under performing investments once or twice a year.

So, there you go with some of the rebalancing strategies that I've read/though about. Personally, I'm employing the third strategy for my personal investments. While this third strategy works by taking profit of high performing investments, but i realize that this strategy might not be optimal for maintaining/optimizing asset allocation.

Different portfolio rebalancing strategies works for other investors in different ways. I'm still trying out which other strategy that might work better for my personal investments. So, which portfolio rebalancing strategies that work for you? Care to share the strategy that works miracle for you with all of us?

Public Mutual PRS Funds Explained

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Public Mutual is the fourth private retirement scheme (PRS) provider in Malaysia that launched their PRS funds on 26 November, 2012. Public Mutual will have two PRS schemes, conventional and Syariah, of which each PRS scheme will have 3 core funds, namely Public Mutual PRS Growth / Public Mutual PRS Islamic Growth, Public Mutual PRS Moderate / Public Mutual PRS Islamic Moderate and Public Mutual PRS Conservative / Public Mutual PRS Islamic Conservative funds. In this article, I will focus on the conventional PRS funds.

Public Mutual PRS Growth Fund is targeting those investors below age of 40 years old or have high risk profile. This fund will mainly invest in combination of index/dividend/growth stocks. 20% of the fund's NAV can be invested in warrants, while up to 40% of the fund's NAV can be invested in existing Public Mutual unit trust funds. 20% of the equity portion of the fund can be invested in Asia Pacific markets.

Public Mutual PRS Moderate Fund is targeting those investors between the age of 40 - 50 years old or have moderate risk profile. This fund will mainly invest in combination of index/dividend/growth stocks. 10% of the fund's NAV can be invested in warrants, while up to 40% of the fund's NAV can be invested in existing Public Mutual unit trust funds. 10% of the equity portion of the fund can be invested in Asia Pacific markets. The remaining portion of the fund (up to 40%) will be invested in fixed income and money markets.

Public Mutual PRS Conservative Fund is a fixed income fund with a small portion of equity investment, is meant for those over 50 years old or have low risk profile. 60 - 80% of the fund will be invested in fixed income, of which 20% of the NAV will be in money markets. Up to 20% of the remaining portion of the fund can be invested in local equities. The fund managers for all these 3 PRS funds are Liew Mun Hon and Zaharudin bin Ghazali.

The summary of Public Mutual PRS funds information is available below:

Public Mutual PRS is a straight forward PRS scheme, similar to HwangIM PRS Solutions. However, fees wise, Public Mutual PRS funds are a lot more expensive, with its 3% sales charge and higher trustees fees. However, annual management fees for Public Mutual PRS is slightly lower than HwangIM PRS. If we are referring to the unit trust funds operated by Public Mutual and HwangIM, i guess both of them are awards winners and have better track record if compared to CIMB-Principal and Manulife.

To know more information about Public Mutual PRS offerings, please visit the official site. To understand the difference between PRS and RSP, please visit this link.

Manulife PRS Funds Explained

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Manulife Asset Management Services Berhad is the third private retirement scheme (PRS) provider in Malaysia that recently launched their PRS funds. As a beginning, Manulife will have 3 core funds, namely Manulife PRS Growth, Manulife PRS Moderate and Manulife PRS Conservative funds. Manulife PRS Growth Fund is targeting those investors below age of 40 years old or have high risk profile, while for Manulife PRS Moderate Fund is a balanced fund targeting those investors between the age of 40 - 50 years old or have moderate risk profile. Manulife PRS Conservative Fund is a fixed income fund with a small portion of equity investment, is meant for those over 50 years old or have low risk profile. Manulife PRS Growth and Manulife PRS Moderate funds will have up to 30% of equity allocation for investments in Asia Pacific markets.

The summary of Manulife PRS funds information is available below:

So, what's the difference between HwangIM PRS Solutions, CIMB-Principal PRS Plus and Manulife PRS offerings? Here's my attempt to summarize the differences:

PRS Funds: CIMB-Principal offers more PRS funds, but all but one fund invest only in local equities. I like HwangIM PRS Solutions and Manulife PRS funds which i think offer local equities defensiveness with some potential upside due to some small allocation (up to 30%) for Asia Pacific ex Japan equities.
Investor Class: CIMB-Principal PRS offerings are quite confusing to investors due to its investors classifications (which is depends on CIMB-Principal discretion). Manulife PRS also have investor classification based on the length of investors loyalty to Manulife. Both offerings are not to my likings.
Sales charge: Big drawback for CIMB-Principal and Manulife as they charges 3% and 2% sales charge respectively as opposed to 0% by HwangIM PRS Solutions.
Fees: This is the part that CIMB-Principal trump HwangIM PRS Solutions and Manulife PRS offerings. Annual management fee is generally lower than HwangIM PRS and Manulife PRS funds. PPA annual fee of RM 8 is absorbed by CIMB-Principal whereas in HwangIM PRS and Manulife PRS, investors have to fork up the fee individually. However, CIMB-Principal has their own account opening fees which can be waived if you invest at least RM 1000/contribution or setup monthly RSP contribution of at least RM 100. Manulife PRS is the worst PRS provider in terms of fees charged to investors due to their extremely high annual management fees and the presence of redemption charge within 5 years of investment.
Fund Provider Performance: While no PRS providers have any performance track record so far, but based on recent years of unit trust funds performance, it seems like HwangIM is a better performer. Of course, past performance is not representative of future performance. Take this with a pinch of salt please.

CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Funds Explained

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 03:00:00 +0000

CIMB-Principal is the second panel member that launch Private Retirement Scheme (PRS) to the public in Malaysia, after Hwang PRS Solutions. CIMB-Principal PRS Plus comprehensive offerings comprise of five funds based on investors risk appetite and investment styles (do it for me vs do it yourself).

At launch time, three core funds, namely CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Growth Fund, CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Moderate Fund and CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Conservative Fund will be available to those investors who prefer do it for me investment style. This means that CIMB-Principal will manage the fund allocations depending on the preset investment objective and asset allocation. The other two non-core funds, CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Equity Fund and CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Asia Pacific ex Japan Equity will be available to investors who are comfortable with higher equity exposure and would like to manage their PRS portfolio in a more active manner.

CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Growth Fund is targeting those investors below age of 40 years old or have high risk profile, while for CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Moderate Fund is a balanced fund targeting those investors between the age of 40 - 50 years old or have moderate risk profile. CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Conservative Fund is a fixed income fund with a small portion of equity investment, is meant for those over 50 years old or have low risk profile. CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Equity Fund is a local equity fund while CIMB-Principal PRS Plus Asia Pacific ex Japan Equity fund feeds into existing CIMB-Principal Asia Pacific Dynamic Income fund. There is also another set of PRS Islamic funds available but i will not be covering these Islamic PRS funds in this article.

The summary of CIMB-Principal PRS Plus funds information is available below:

Note: If you need to open the spreadsheet in another tab, click here.

So, what's the difference between CIMB-Principal PRS Plus offerings and HwangIM PRS Solutions? Here's my attempt to summarize the differences:

PRS Funds: CIMB-Principal offers more PRS funds, but all but one fund invest only in local equities. I like HwangIM PRS Solutions funds which i think offers local equities defensiveness with some potential upside due to some small allocation for Asia Pacific ex Japan dividend paying equities.
Investor Class: CIMB-Principal PRS offerings are quite confusing to investors due to its investors classifications (which is depends on CIMB-Principal discretion) . Not to my likings.
Sales charge: Big drawback for CIMB-Principal as it charges 3% sales charge as opposed to 0% by HwangIM PRS Solutions.
Fees: This is the part that CIMB-Principal trump HwangIM PRS Solutions offerings. Annual management fee is generally lower than HwangIM PRS funds. PPA annual fee of RM 8 is absorbed by CIMB-Principal whereas in HwangIM PRS, investors have to fork up the fee individually. However, CIMB-Principal has their own account opening fees which can be waived if you invest at least RM 1000/contribution or setup monthly RSP contribution of at least RM 100.
Fund Provider Performance: While no PRS providers have any performance track record so far, but based on recent years of unit trust funds performance, it seems like HwangIM is a better performer. Of course, past performance is not representative of future performance. Take this with a pinch of salt please.

To know more information about CIMB-Principal PRS Plus offerings, please visit the official site. To understand the difference between PRS and RSP, please visit this link.

Scam Alert: iPanelOnline

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Updates: I finally received a feedback from iPanelOnline, saying that my account was deleted due to inactivity. Question is I've been participating in many surveys and have accumulated many points. What is considered inactivity? So, guys, please be aware that one day, your account might be deleted as well without warning.

I was a member of iPanelOnline survey web site for over a year and have introduced many friends and acquaintances to this survey site to earn some side income. Things went smoothly for over a year and I managed to withdraw some money from iPanelOnline to my PayPal account twice.

However, for the past 3 months, I could not login to my account anymore. When i tried to request for lost password, I was notified that my account do not exist. I even tried to contact the customer service of the web site, but so far I've got no response. My account was never restored. This, to me, is a scam. So far, this is the first web site that let me down....scammers!

So, for those who have subscribed to iPanelOnline, do remember to withdraw your money regularly. Even if something screw up later on, you will not regret leaving your cash accumulated with iPanelOnline and they're gone the next day.

HwangIM PRS Funds Explained

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 03:00:00 +0000

HwangIM is the first panel member that launch Private Retirement Scheme (PRS) to the public in Malaysia. Hwang PRS Solutions, comprising four funds based on contributors' risk appetite and needs, are targeting guided annual return of between five per cent and 11 per cent. At launch time, three core funds, namely Hwang PRS Growth Fund, Hwang PRS Moderate Fund and Hwang PRS Conservative Fund. The fourth non-core fund, Hwang AIIMAN PRS Syariah Growth Fund will be launched at a later date.

Hwang PRS Growth Fund is targeting those investors below age of 40 years old or have high risk profile, while for Hwang PRS Moderate Fund is a balanced fund targeting those investors between the age of 40 - 50 years old or have moderate risk profile. Hwang PRS Conservative Fund is a fixed income fund with a small portion of equity investment, is meant for those over 50 years old or have low risk profile. Hwang AIIMAN PRS Syariah Growth Fund is a feeder fund for existing HwangIM fund, Hwang AIIMAN Syariah Growth Fund.

The unique feature for Hwang PRS Solutions is that there will not be any up front sales charge. That means all the money invested will be used for buying units. There is also no switching fees between PRS funds and no redemption charge as well. Another positive point for Hwang PRS Solution is that the annual management and trustee fees are on par with the usual unit trust funds.

However, there are some fees involved when an investor invest in PRS funds. Most of the fees involved are being paid to Private Pension Administrator (PPA), the body that administrate the whole PRS schemes. Some of the fees to be paid are account opening fee, pre-retirement withdrawal fee, fund transfer fee (to another PRS provider) etc. Below is the summary of Hwang PRS Solutions funds information:

Note: If you need to open the spreadsheet in another tab, click here.

You can get the official information about HwangIM PRS funds from this link.

Private Retirement Scheme vs Regular Savings Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Private Retirement Scheme (PRS) was soft launched by the Prime Minister in July as an additional financial tool to supplement our sole retirement funds, EPF. After the initial hoo-hah, the hype about PRS has cooled down with not much information on the details of the PRS available to the public. However, you can refer to this booklet for some basic info and Q & A on PRS.

Since we've got this simple booklet to explain everything about PRS, I'm not going to dwelve in details about PRS. What I'm interested in discussing about is the comparison between PRS and Regular Savings Plan (RSP). Typically for a PRS investment, we are talking about regular top-ups to the retirement funds with your spare cash, be it on monthly/quarterly/one-off basis. This is basically the same principle as RSP.

Now, as an investor, if you already have active RSP with one of the fund houses or via online unit trust distributors, such as Fundsupermart, you might be wondering, should i cancel my RSP and invest in PRS? As a quick recap, let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of investing in PRS:

Major advantages of PRS:

Maximum tax relief of RM3,000 per annum, up to 10 years - This is probably the single deciding factor on whether to invest in PRS. If you are currently paying tax at 26% level, you can cut down tax payment by RM 690 per annum. This tax relief threshold could potentially be revised higher to encouraged investments into PRS in the future, which translates to even more tax savings.
Lower sales charge for funds - One key feature in PRS is the low sales charge of 0 - 3% for investment into PRS funds, as compared to typical sales charge of 5 - 6.5% for normal investments with fund houses.

Major disadvantages of PRS:

Tax penalty of 8% for pre-mature withdrawal - If you plan to withdraw from Account B, you will be taxed 8% of the withdrawal amount.
Inflexible - Due to its objective as supplementary retirement fund, investment into PRS funds are restricted in terms of the choices of funds/fund houses and withdrawal frequency.
Unknown performance track record - PRS funds are likely to be either new funds or rebranded funds from existing fund houses. These funds have no performance track record for the public to analyze on.

In my opinion, if you are already investing in RSP for long term, i guess it's logical to switch over to PRS IF the PRS funds available for investment is already one of your RSP funds AND for the tax relief benefits, even though it's only for 10 years.

As mentioned, details about PRS are still sketchy at best. I wonder why it took so long to take off. Malaysia is blessed with liquidity now, and given the right promotion and legal benefits, PRS might well be one of the investment tools at the consumers' disposal in the near future.

So, I'll relook into this article again once PRS is generally available to the public...stay tuned for Part II!

Hwang PRS Launch

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:03:00 +0000

HWANG Investment Management Bhd (Hwang IM) has become the first of the eight appointed Private Retirement Scheme (PRS) providers to roll out its PRS products and services.

Hwang PRS Solutions, comprising four funds based on contributors' risk appetite and needs, are targeting guided annual return of between five per cent and 11 per cent.

Even though there is no minimum dividend policy, unlike the minimum 2.5 per cent that the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) offers and the funds are not capital-guaranteed nor protected, Hwang IM is confident that like other funds it manages, the PRS funds would perform just as good.

"The sound principles and good safeguarding policies put in place by the Securities Commission to some extent provides for a viable framework for this scheme to succeed. But like most things in life, nothing is guaranteed," said Hwang IM chief executive officer Teng Chee Wai.

He said as the country's first voluntary retirement scheme, it is only natural that the public gets wary of a scheme that is not capital-guaranteed.

Teng said PRS allows contributors to choose their provider, fund as well as determine the frequency and amount of investment they wish to make.

These options, he said, allow them to determine the level of commitment and speed at which they wish to achieve their targeted sum or financial independence.

"We are offering to the public low-cost PRS solutions that feature zero per cent front-end fees across all fund offerings ... our view is that retirement investing should be simple and low cost without the high initial fees usually associated with unit trust investing," said Teng.

Hwang IM has set an investment sum of RM100 for each fund compared with RM1,000 currently set for most unit trust funds, while subsequent top-ups are set at a minimum of RM50.

The four Hwang PRS funds are the Growth Fund for those below 40, the Moderate Fund for those between 40-50 years of age, Conservative Fund for those above 50 and Syariah Growth Fund.

Contributors to both the conventional and Syariah Growth Funds can be assured of a guided total annual return of nine per cent to 11 per cent, while the Moderate Fund between seven per cent and nine per cent and five per cent to six per cent for the Conservative Fund. (The guided total annual return is based on the real historical returns of Hwang IM's in-house managed funds as at September 30 2012.)

Teng said Hwang IM is optimistic that the funds will be providing good first-year returns to contributors and is targeting RM100 million in three years.

Source: Business Times

Fundsupermart Referral Program

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:11:00 +0000

Fundsupermart Malaysia (FSM) has launched a referral program for their existing account holders to encourage the account holders to introduce new clients to FSM. This is how FSM referral program works:

FSM account holder submit the name, phone and email address of potential client to FSM.
FSM will send an email to potential client with an activation link to open an account.
Potential client fills in account opening form and activate online FSM account.

It's as easy as that. Of course, you cant run away from submitting from some supporting documents when submitting the account opening form. So you might ask, what's the catch for all this trouble?

Benefits for introducer:

Every new account activation will entitle the introducer a token which is equivalent to 1% discount of existing sales charge of the unit trust funds available on FSM platform.
Every 5 new accounts activations will entitle the introducer an additional 1 token which is equivalent to 0.5% discount on sales charge, on top of your 1% discount token for every new client introduced.
Each of these tokens will last for 6 months from the token credit date

Benefits for new client:

1% sales charge for any fund purchase within 30 days of account activation.
Max 1% sales charge for any regular savings plan (RSP) that you subscribe for first 6 months.
On top of this, there's a running lucky draw promotion now on new account activations.

I've invested in FSM since the beginning of FSM in 2008 and have never regretted investing in this platform. Not only that you pay sooooo much cheaper sales charge (1 - 2%) for unit trust funds, it's also convenient as it's available online with superb real time customer service support. FSM is also the largest online unit trust funds distributor in Malaysia with assets under management of over RM100 million. So, no worries of scam....

Why pay more to invest? Come, join me on FSM platform. If you are interested, do drop me a mail at jutamind@gmail.com by leaving your full name, contact phone number and email address.

PS: It is FSM requirements to get the contact details to get introduced. Not that i'm interested to know all your personal thingy :)

AS 1Malaysia Declares 6.6 Cents Dividend for FY 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 04:05:00 +0000

Amanah Saham Malaysia Berhad has declared a dividend of 6.6 cents per unit for Amanah Saham 1Malaysia (AS1M) for the financial year 2012. The income distribution will be reinvested in the form of new units and will automatically be credited into the unitholders' accounts on October 1.

As a comparison, last year's dividend declared was 6.5 cents.

For comparison of historical dividend payout between ASW 2020, ASM and AS1M, please refer to this article.

Source: Bernama

ASW 2020 Declares 6.6 Cents Dividend for FY 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:06:00 +0000

Amanah Saham Malaysia Berhad has declared a dividend of 6.6 cents per unit for Amanah Saham Wawasan 2020 (ASW 2020) for the current financial year ending August 31. The income distribution will be automatically credited into the unitholders' accounts on September 1. Investors will be getting their payment vouchers and annual reports by mid October.

As a comparison, last year's dividend declared was 6.5 cents.

Source: Bernama

iHerb Rewards Surprise!

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Few days back, I got a nice surprise from iHerb, a USD 100 reward, from an online contest in their web site, which i'm not even aware of. My initial suspicion is that this could be another email spam asking the public to click on some links in the email etc.

Here's the email i got from iHerb:

Dear iHerb Rewards Partner,

Congratulations! Our June 2012 iHerb Rewards Bonus Challenge has come to a close and you have earned an extra $100 bonus by cutting your ranking in half (or better)!

You will find the bonus (as credit) inside your iHerb Rewards account.

https://rewards.iherb.com/login

Thank you for your support and we encourage you to continue promoting iHerb and earning rewards.

Best regards,

The iHerb Rewards Team

www.iherb.com

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So what i did was login to the iHerb Rewards web site and check my account balance. Holy cow, the USD 100 is already banked into my account! Here's the proof:

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for iHerb account here, and start ordering cheap quality vitamins! Start referring your friends too to earn some side income!

To learn how to sign up for iHerb account, please read through this article.

Tokio Marine Life Health Care Supreme Schedule of Benefits & Premium Table

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Health Care Supreme is a yearly guaranteed renewable medical and health insurance rider that can be attached to individual life and investment-linked policies from Tokio Marine Life. This medical plan is renewable up to age of 80.

The unique selling points of this medical card are as follow:

Insured can opt to increase room & board by 50% with a loading of 7.5%. For example, if you purchased a medical card with room & board rate of 200, you can enhance your medical card by adding the upgrade room & board option to increase room & board limit to 300 at the cost of 7.5% more premium.
Insured can opt to increase annual limit by 50% and lifetime limit by 100% with a loading of 5%. For example, if you purchased a medical card with room & board rate of 200, you are entitled to annual and lifetime limit of 100,000 and 400,000 respectively. You can enhance your medical card by adding the upgrade annual & lifetime limit option to increase annual & lifetime limit to 150,000 and 1,500,000 at the cost of 5% more premium.
Up to 15% discounts on premium for no claims discount from third year renewal onwards.

The advantages of Tokio Marine Life Health Care Premium medical card is listed as below:

Guaranteed renewable up to 80 years old.
No co-insurance.
Up to 15% no claims discount from 3rd year renewal onwards.
A good list of panel hospital.
Options to upgrade room & board, and annual & lifetime limit with additional premium.

The disadvantages of Tokio Marine Life Health Care Premium medical card is listed as below:

Not value for money if didnt upgrade room & board and annual & lifetime limit.
Very low limit for cancer and kidney dialysis treatments.

In the sections below, you will find the schedule of benefits, and premium table for medical rider of traditional life insurance and investment-linked policy. There are four medical plans to choose from, depending on the room & board rate.

Health Care Supreme Schedule of Benefits & Premium Table

Disclaimer: The information published is for your reference only. Please refer to your insurance agent for the most up to date information.

Comparison of Medical Card Panel Hospital

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Out of so many medical cards available in the market today, how do you select the most suitable medical plan for yourself? Apart from analyzing the coverage of the medical plans as listed in my Medical Card Comparison article, there are also many other aspects have to be checked carefully before you sign on the dot.

Based on excellent comment from Wi1s0n in my article mentioned above, one of the points that we have to consider is the list of panel hospitals that is covered by the medical plans. It is worth to note that even though a hospital is covered by a particular medical plan, it does not mean that the specialist that you are seeking medical advice from are approved by the insurance company. Therefore, it is advisable for you to get hold of the panel hospital list as well as the approved specialist list from your insurance agent.

Below is the list of panel hospitals in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor that is covered by each insurance company. One observation from the list below is that medical plans from general insurance companies typically has a larger network of panel hospitals. However, upon observations, some of the panel hospitals are considered minor/community hospitals.

Among the life insurance companies, medical plan from Allianz Life Insurance stands out for having a much larger hospital network as compared to its peers. If you compare the premium you paid for the medical coverage from this article, and combine with its larger hospital network, I would say the medical plan from Allianz Life Insurance is logically one of the medical plans/cards that you should put into your shortlist.

NOTE: To open Google Docs in a separate tab, please click here.

Disclaimer: The information published is for your reference only. Please refer to your insurance agent for the most up to date information.

Comparison of Family Personal Accident

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Personal accident (PA) insurance policy is one of the critical component of insurance planning for a person, but it is often neglected and overshadowed by the more popular insurance in the market such as hospitalization and surgical medical plans. With PA insurance, you can protect yourself or your loved ones financially in the event of accident that results in hospitalization, disability or death.

There are many types of PA insurance in the market, such as classic PA, travel PA, driver PA, family PA, and etc. In this article, we are focusing on family PA plan, i.e. personal accident insurance that will include both insurance owner and spouse as well as all the children in the household within a single policy.

In Malaysia, most of the PA plans are sold by general insurers. This article intends to compare some of the main features of the family PA plans offered by some of the leading general insurance companies in Malaysia, such as Allianz, Lonpac, Chartis, Tokio Marine, as well as life insurance companies like AIA and ING. For the purpose of this article, we will assume that the insurance owner will purchase a family PA plan with the accidental death payout of RM100,000.

Here's what he will get from the family PA plans mentioned above:

Note: To open the spreadsheet in another tab, click this link.

From the comparison table above, the boxes highlighted in Yellow are the advantages of the features of each family PA plan if compared to the same feature of competitor family PA plan.

As you can see, every family PA plan has similar features with differentiating amount of coverage. It is important to note that there is no such thing as the "best" family PA in the market, but rather the "most suitable" family PA plan for you. When i mean the "most suitable" family PA plan, i mean that the coverage offered is within your comfortable zone and within your budget.

For me, I tend to focus on factors such as payout amount for accidental death, accidental TPD, medical reimbursement, accident hospital income, weekly benefit, prostheses, corrective dental/cosmetic surgery, and renewal bonus. The remaining features are nice to have, and in fact add to the cost of insurance.

In my opinion, family PA plans from AIA, Allianz and Chartis Insurance stand out from the competitors by packaging their plans to focus on core factos as mentioned above. However, the premium for these family PA plan are well above the average market rate. If you are looking for a more balanced family PA plan with reasonable premium, notable mention are Lonpac FlexiCare, Kurnia Perfect 10 Plus, AXA SmartCare Prime, and QBE FlexiCare.

To get the details about each family PA plan, please follow the links below:

Disclaimer: The information published is for your reference only. Please refer to your insurance agent for the most up to date information.

Stock Review: AMWAY (6351)

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 03:00:00 +0000

In my previous article on stock selection criteria, I am using stock grading system as advocated by Infinite Wealth, which is basically based on fundamental analysis. According to Infinite Wealth grading system, a stock with grading of 9 stars and above is worthy of investment. A quick recap on the stock grading system is as follow:

Turnover
Net profit after tax (Net PAT)
Net profit margin (NPM)
Cashflow from operation (Cashflow Ops)
Cash ratio (= Asset/Liabilities)
Average net dividend yield (Net DY)
Average ROE (ROE)

Today, I'm going to analyze on AMWAY (6351). I will not be covering too much on the business structure and backgrounds of AMWAY since these information are widely available in the Internet. The financial figures that you see in the tables before comes from EquitiesTracker.com, which is typically available with your stock trading account.

From the stock grading that we've done, it seems like AMWAY (6351) is a investment worthy stock, since it has fulfilled all my stock selection criteria. Even though AMWAY (6351) scores highly at 11 stars, it seems like the net profit after tax and net profit margin are shrinking year after year.

The stock grading system only tells you how to select which stock is investment grade, but it doesn't tell you when to buy or sell the stock. To find out what is buy/sell price, I normally use the past 5 years PER range and 52-week low price. I will buy a stock if the current price is the lower price of 52-week low or the average estimated buy price. I will sell a stock if the current price is higher than 52-week high or the average estimated sell price.

To determine the buy and sell price, we will need some historical PER data. I get all these information from the Dynaquest Stock Performance Guide. In this Stock Performance Guide, you will get the 5-year historical PER range as well as Dynaquest's EPS forecast for the next year. Based on the these information, I've calculated the estimanted buy/sell price and compare these prices with the 52-week low/high price from the EquitiesTracker web site. From the Price worksheet above, I've derived the suggested buy price is RM8 or below, and the suggested sell price is RM9.58 or higher.

My stock selection criteria and pricing methodology are not bullet proof and serves as a guidance to me. I welcome constructive comments and feedback on my review on AMWAY, as well as ideas on stock selection and pricing methodology.

Amanah Saham Malaysia Unitholders Get 6.5 Sen Dividend

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Amanah Saham Nasional Bhd (ASNB), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB), has announced a 6.50 sen dividend per unit for Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM) for the financial year ending March 31, 2012.

The income distribution was higher than the 6.38 sen per unit paid last year, PNB Chairman Tun Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid said today.

He said the income distribution would involve a total payout of RM820.24 million, an increase of 8.6 percent compared to the RM755.05 million paid out last year.

"The payment will benefit 546,341 unit holders who currently hold 12.62 billion units of ASM," he told a press conference here today.

Up until March 21, ASM has recorded a gross income of RM978.32 million.

For comparison of historical dividends distributed by Amanah Saham Wawasan 2020, Amanah Saham Malaysia and Amanah Saham 1Malaysia, please refer to this article.

Source: Bernama

UPDATED: Comparison of Medical Cards from Leading Life Insurance Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 08:55:00 +0000

Updates (as of 10/12/2012): Increased overall lifetime limit of Great Eastern Smart Medic.

This article intends to compare some of the main features of the standalone and investment-linked medical cards (i.e. medical riders that is attached to an investment-linked life insurance) offered by some of the leading life insurance companies in Malaysia, such as ING, Prudential, AIA, Great Eastern, Allianz, and AXA-Affin Life. For the purpose of this article, we will assume that a non-smoking male with the next birthday of 30 years old wants to purchase a medical cards with a room & board rate of RM 200 per night.

Here's what he will get from the life insurance companies mentioned above:

* Annual & lifetime limit for Allianz Powerlink MediCover was revised to 100,000 & 1,000,000 respectively.

* The premium for Allianz Powerlink MediCover 200 in the comparison table is based on previous schedule of benefits listed here. Will update once i have the updated info. Thanks chew_ronnie for providing info regarding the revised premium for 30 yo male.

NOTE: To open Google Docs in a separate tab, please click here.

From the comparison table above, the boxes highlighted in Yellow are the advantages of the features of each medical card if compared to the same feature of competitor medical cards.

As you can see, every medical card has similar features with differentiating amount of coverage. It is important to note that there is no such thing as the "best" medical card in the market, but rather the "most suitable" medical card for you. When i mean the "most suitable" medical card, i mean that the coverage offered is within your comfortable zone and within your budget.

For me, I tend to focus on features like the number of days covered for room & board and ICU, kidney dialysis and cancer treatment coverage, high annual limit, and as well as the co-insurance and annual premium paid. The reason why i exclude high lifetime limit as a selection criteria is because i believe that if you have any terminal disease such as cancer, it is quite unlikely that you will survive for a long period to fully utilize all the lifetime limit. For example, if you spend RM100k to cure your cancer for the first time and after a few years, the cancer relapse and you spend another RM100k to treat the relapse. It is quite unlikely that you will survive a few rounds of cancer relapse to fully utilize your RM 1 million lifetime limit. That's why i always think that RM 1 million lifetime limit is more of a marketing gimmick to me!

In my opinion, the best value medical card is Allianz MediCover Plan 200 since it offers reasonably high coverage at the lowest premium. However, please note lower premium now doesnt mean that the premium will not rise. People tend to abuse their medical cards to treat minor sickness/diseases, and such claim cases will increase the premium in the future.

I think Great Eastern Smart Medic 200 medical card is the most complete and balanced for me. It offers one of the higher coverage package in terms of annual limit, treatment days for pre and post hospitalization, and cancer/kidney dialysis treatment at a very reasonable premium (second lowest premium). Another plus point for GE Smart Medic 200 medical card is its no claims bonus in increment of annual limit every 3 years. This will come in handy in the later years since medical inflation is very much higher (probably around 15%) as compared to the national inflation rate. The biggest drawback of Great Eastern Smart Medic 200 medical card is the 10% co-insurance especially for outpatient cancer & kidney dialysis treatments which might burn a hole in the pocket for cancer & kidney dialysis patients.

For most medical cards, you will see clauses such as "claims as per reasonable charges", which is sort of vague to me. For me, all charges charged to me is reasonable as long as the insurance company pays for it, but from the insurance company standpoint, my view might not be valid. If the reasonable charges as determined by insurance companies are much lower than the charges incurred, you will have to fork out extra! Therefore, you need to be aware of such clauses in the fine print and be comfortable with it before signing up the medical plan.

To get the details about each medical card, please follow the links below:

Disclaimer: The information published is for your reference only. Please refer to your insurance agent for the most up to date information.

PruFlexi Med Schedule of Benefits

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Hot off the shelf, Prudential recently launched its latest medical rider, PruFlexi Med, that can be attached to PruLink One or PruLife Ready investment-linked policies. PruFlexi Med is another alternative medical plan to the existing PruHealth medical rider. In fact, both PruHealth and PruFlexi Med are pretty similar in terms of coverage.

So, what is PruFlexi Med medical rider all about? The list below briefly summarize the features of this new medical rider:

Highly customizable medical plan to suit your medical needs - in terms of the daily room & board rate and annual limit.
No co-insurance, but can opt for zero or RM300 deductible.
No more 20% payment/penalty if exceed room & board (R & B) rate - if you stay in the room with higher than your R & B rate, you only need to top up the difference. If you stay in a room with lower R & B rate, Prudential will reimburse you the difference.
Lifetime limit = 20x annual limit.
If compared to PruHealth, PruFlexi Med has higher ICU coverage (60d) and pre-hospitalization treatment days (90d).

Following is the schedule of benefits of PruFlexi Med medical rider. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to list down the premium table for this medical rider due to 112 coverage combinations.

PruFlexi Med Schedule of Benefits

In summary, is PruFlexi Med suitable for you? In my opinion, if you are looking purely from cost of the medical rider point of view, probably PruHealth with the combination of No Claims Bonus (NCB) will make the medical plan cheaper, but you lose out on the flexibility of PruFlexi Med and no 20% payment/penalty if you exceed your R & B daily rate.

Disclaimer: The information published is for your reference only. Please refer to your insurance agent for the most up to date information.

iHerb Review: My Experience with Online Vitamins Purchase

noreply@blogger.com (Jutamind) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Updates (29 Mar, 2014): I've been using DHL Express shipping services with a minimum cost of USD 8 for around 1.5kg of parcel weight. Shipment will arrive in 4 - 5 days and so far I have no issues with Malaysian Custom Department.

I've been buying vitamins and supplements from our friendly neighbourhood stores and pharmacies for as long as i can remember. However, I've been pondering recently whether i should try to source for vitamins and supplements online for cheaper alternatives. I stumbled across one of the larger online vitamins and supplements store that shipped to Malaysia at a very reasonable freight charge, iHerb.

I digged through the Web and found some reviews on the online store iHerb, here and here. With quite promising reviews from the consumers, I took the plunge and ordered 3 bottles of fish oil capsules from iHerb. The amazing thing is the price of the fish oils are so much cheaper AND the shipping cost to Malaysia is only USD 4 via International Airmail (depending on the shipment weight). The drawback is that there is no tracking of parcels for this cheap shipping alternative. Apart from that, the first time you order from iHerb, you need to verify your credit card with iHerb. What you can do is to call your credit card call centre and ask them the 6-digit authorization code for the online purchase that you've made. Then, go to this Contact page and feedback to iHerb on your authorization code. I prefer to use Live Chat to connect to the iHerb representatives which typically comes online around midnight Malaysia time. Once the representative has verified your authorization code, your parcel will be on the way to you!

So, I waited for about 15 days for the goods to arrive. I guess it's a small price to pay for cheap shipping cost. At least it proves that iHerb is a reliable online vitamins and supplements store that delivers. Another great thing about iHerb is that for your FIRST online order, if you use the referral code JUT477 during the ordering process, you are entitled to USD 5 discounts immediately!

So, what's in it for me? Well, if you use the code during your FIRST online order, you get USD 5 discount and I get some referral commission. Fair?? In summary, this is what you get where you order from iHerb online vitamins and supplements store:

Much cheaper product price.
Ship to Malaysia - not many online stores ship to our country
Dirt cheap shipping cost - starts from USD 4 (depending on shipping weight).
Reliable shipment - at least the supplements arrived as promised.
Get discount for your first online order - using referral code JUT477

The drawback? I guess it would be slower and non trackable shipment, and first time credit card authorization. Of course, if you need your stuffs urgently, you can opt for better shipment options.