Such schemes, known locally as “skim cepat kaya”, have made Malaysians lose millions of ringgit.

According to the police’s Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department, there were 17,311 cases opened for investigation last year, a massive jump of 26.6% from 2007.

The department said that one bright spot in all these cases was that actual financial losses were down to RM845mil last year, compared with RM1.9bil in 2007.

Most of these schemes thrived in “grey areas” which can only be loosely regulated despite the best efforts of the authorities to clamp down on culprits.

Many of them operate under the guise of multi-level marketing operations which blur into pyramid schemes, which are illegal.

A market observer pointed out that these establishments would promise returns that even top fund managers found hard to attain in good economic times.

Many of them operate like Ponzi schemes which made no or little actual investments from money collected from the public.

Often in such schemes, the earlier investors would usually get some returns, compared with those who join later.

Surprisingly, many of those who are employed as agents with these businesses do not think such schemes are illegal.

“How can it be a scam when I can make money?” an agent attached to an established restaurant chain said.

The restaurant has half a dozen outlets in the Klang Valley and offers the public membership for a fee which entitles them to make money from eating at the outlets and through referrals.

What makes it interesting is that several of these establishments found taking deposits or cash from the public have been operating for a number of years without ever being questioned by the authorities if their operations are legal.

In the past one-and-a-half years, there has been a significant rise in such operations.

Their aggressive and “successful” marketing approach has even become somewhat of a trend, and has been adopted by many other restaurants to boost sales.

If one were to google the term “scams in Malaysia”, one would find a slew of businesses which concerned citizens have exposed as a “bit dodgy”.

However, the people who run such operations appear nonchalant about the amount of media and Internet attention on their businesses.

They are able to navigate their way around existing laws and capitalise on their marketing strategies before the law catches up with them.

Starprobe decided to investigate a number of these business operations to find out their modus operandi following a number of helpful suggestions from concerned readers and members of the public, especially cases which relate to non-financial institutions.

The response from an official of the Registrar of Companies (ROC) was that it had no jurisdiction to control the activities of such companies.

“If the company is registered with an identifiable business, how they market their products or services is not within our purview,” the official said.

But with regards to companies illegally taking deposits without having an investment licence, Bank Negara has the right to investigate and prosecute them. In fact, from last year until now, 19 companies have been under investigation and raided.

While the authorities are trying their best to enforce the laws, the sheer number of these operations make it an uphill task.

The situation is compounded by having different agencies with different jurisdictions conducting investigations independently, thus not giving a clearer picture.

For example, Consumer Claims Tribunal chairman Rungit Singh said his tribunal has jurisdiction only over consumer complaints and concerns. The tribunal is under the purview of the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry.

“Once a person invests in a scheme, that person is not protected under the consumer laws,” Rungit Singh said.

According to him, consumer laws only cover complaints regarding goods and services and do not have jurisdiction over investors.

And on multi-level marketing, an official from the Consumers Association of Penang said such companies were perfectly legal as long as they were licensed by the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry.

“However, some multi-level marketing operations get into grey areas when the bulk of their sales are not derived from products or services but rather from other forms of collections,” she said over the phone.

She added that a sign of a possible scam was when most of the earnings of the company is derived from activities unrelated to the sale of goods or services.

According to a commercial crime lawyer who did not wish to be named, the law regarding legal and illegal activities was clear.

“However, access to critical information may be time-consuming and the prosecution of those who deliberately go against the law will require substantial evidence,” he said.

The lawyer said there was a need for easier and quicker access to information on registered businesses, possibly delivered via a centralised system and an oversight board with experts for the public to turn to for complaints, advice and information on confirmed scams.

“There is a need for a quicker mechanism to identify and respond to scams before more people lose their money,” he said, adding that many of the scams had invested little in their marketing strategies and did not have a business continuity plan.

The lawyer said it should be noted that there were also a number of people who were either gullible or prepared to take higher investment risks driven purely by greed, despite the best of advice.

A source who tracked such scams said it was near impossible to keep tabs efficiently on them.

“That’s the biggest problem, there are thousands of such scams involving hundreds of millions of ringgit out there that the relevant agencies are not able to track all of them. They’re only able to pursue the ones that have been brought to their attention,” she said.

She added that the answer was not more regulation but more awareness of such scams.

“Awareness is better now than before, we have more inquiries coming in on various businesses,” she said.

SOME studies conducted in Malaysia have shown that most retirees spend all their EPF money within three years of their retirement. Given that the average lifespan for a Malaysian is 75 years, if we retire at 55 and spend all our EPF money within three years, a lot of us will be wondering how to survive from 58 to 75.

The most worrying question that most of us will be asking is how to survive retirement when we lose our steady stream of monthly income to cover our daily expenses.

However, if we have been building an investment portfolio apart from EPF money, we would not be able to generate a source of returns from our own investment portfolio.

In reality, a lot of us have been spending most of our savings, including part of our EPF savings on our children’s education and clearing debts on house and car purchases, which leave us with not much savings for our retirement.

With this general concern in mind, let’s look into how much of our EPF money we can afford to spend to have enough for our retirement based on the our local conditions and some assumptions.

Generally, an average Malaysian starts working at 25 and reaches retirement at 55 (after 30 years of working), thereafter living the remaining 20 years (until 75) relying on the EPF savings.

We will assume a starting pay of RM1,500, growing at the rate of 8% per annum; an average bonus of two months per annum, average EPF returns of 5%, total EPF contribution of 23% (employer: 12%, employee: 11%) and inflation rate of 3%.

Our main objective is to test how much EPF money we can spend until we use it all up.

Our analysis shows that if we are able to live with just one-third (or 33%) of our last drawn salary, the EPF money should be able to support us for 20 years until we pass away at 75.

From the example below, if a person’s last drawn salary is RM13,976 at 55, he can only afford to spend one-third or RM4,612 per month after retirement (1/3 x RM13,976).

However, if his spending exceeds the one-third level, such as 50% or the full amount of his last drawn salary, his EPF money can only last 12 or five years respectively.

Even though our computations are based on a lot of assumptions and hypothetical scenarios, our objective is to bring to your attention that we need to be careful in spending our EPF money and control our expenses once we retire.

We will need to adjust our lifestyle after our retirement, especially for those of us that are used to spending most of our take-home pay when we are still working.

Once we lose the regular income source and are relying just on the savings, we will need to plan carefully in order not to out-live our savings. In this example, we can only afford to spend 33% of our last salary after retirement!

Everyone has different financial situations. However, we need to plan for our retirement. If possible, we need to build our own investment portfolio apart from the EPF savings. We may need to seek some part-time jobs after retirement if our financial resources do not permit us to stop working. Besides, we need to clear all our outstanding debts before retirement.

We also need to buy enough life and medical insurance for ourselves as well as set up education funds for our children.

Last but not least, one important point to note is that our computation is based on the assumption that we are still able to generate 5% returns after retirement.

Unless we have the skills and knowledge to generate the returns, putting the money back in EPF and letting EPF generate returns may be a good option. For the average person, we feel that it is not easy to generate 5% returns annually over a long period of time.

● Ooi Kok Hwa is an investment adviser and managing partner of MRR Consulting.
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KUALA LUMPUR: Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) still plans to explore opportunities to expand its takaful business overseas despite the termination of an agreement with Jeddah-based Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) in April.

President and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid Omar said that in terms of its takaful business expansion, Maybank was looking at countries it was already present and also markets with high Muslim population.

“In some markets, we might be looking at partnering the local entities that can provide the local market knowledge and local distribution. Talks with potential local partners are in the early stages,” he told a press conference after presenting RM7.12mil zakat payment from Maybank group to 39 organisations, comprising 15 state zakat centres and 24 non-governmental organisations and welfare foundations.

Maybank had on April 29 announced the termination of its agreement with ICD, signed in May last year, to jointly explore the feasibility of establishing an international takaful holding company with a view to creating a global leader in the takaful industry.

The parties agreed to not proceed with the establishment of the holding company after the completion of a feasibility study and review of the final report presented by the appointed consultants.

Maybank Islamic Bhd executive vice-president and acting chief executive officer Ibrahim Hassan has said in a previous interview that he expected financing growth to increase by at least 12% for the financial year ended June 30 (FY09), up from RM21.1bil in FY08.

Wahid said growth for the first three quarters in the financial year ended June 30, 2009 (FY09) was due to the overall growth in Islamic loans and the availability of more Islamic financing options.

He said the growth in Islamic banking was higher compared with the group’s commercial banking business.

“We continue to expect Islamic banking to grow by double digits in both financing and deposits moving forward in FY10,” he said.

On Singapore’s central bank banning 10 financial institutions, including Maybank Singapore from selling structured notes after they offered products tied to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, Wahid said: “Most banks sell the products but we did not sell any Lehman products in Malaysia.”

“This is actually an industry issue in Singapore. The Association of Banks in Singapore had already issued the press statement on Tuesday to describe the issue and measures taken by banks involved,” he said.

Wahid said member banks of the association had agreed to follow the measures which cover a range of governance and assurance processes, training and compensation of sales personnel, consumer education and enhancements to the sales process itself.

The level of proactiveness displayed by Maybank Singapore had resulted in the bank receiving the lowest fine, he added.

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Address : No. 71, Jalan Rasah, 70300 Seremban, Negeri Sembilan.
Tel : 06-7647048

2) Hospital Name : Columbia Asia Hospital Taiping
Address : No. 5, Jalan Perwira, 34000 Taiping, Perak.
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I’ve been self-employed sebagai solusi konsultan keuangan ritel yang berbasis di Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia sejak Januari 2004. Saat ini saya associating dengan LTH KELOMPOK, salah satu terbesar dan cepat pertumbuhan badan memaksa Prudential di bawah Malaysia. Latar belakang saya belajar dan bekerja dalam pengembangan perangkat lunak dan web sebelumnya saya pindah ke bisnis perencanaan keuangan. Saya berkonsultasi terutama orang Islam di perencanaan keuangan dan perencanaan pensiun walaupun saya lakukan membantu lembaga terkait dalam manajemen teknologi informasi dan komunikasi.

Selain kegiatan usaha saya, saya tetap sibuk dengan mengelola blog. Saya juga masih tetap mengetahui tentang teknologi terbaru, softwares dan gadget di internet.

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Inilah jadinya ayat dalam bahasa Indonesian untuk About page yang   saya    try translate menggunakan Google Translate tool. Hmm… boleh la paham sikit-sikit..:-)

Anda jugak boleh try sendiri di sini dan lihatlah sendiri kehebatannya

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Hari ni saya balik rumah saya tengok ada dua surat. Rupa-rupanya surat yang dihantar oleh PruBSN yang disertakan sekali dengan cd untuk Takafulink Funds Report untuk tahun 2008. Bagi kawan-kawan yang dihargai yang belum dapat surat beserta cd ini boleh bagitau saya untuk tindakan lanjut. Terima kasih

Bank Negara assistant governor Datuk Muhammad Ibrahim said Malaysia had implemented the risk-based capital framework this year and new product regulations.

He said these developments were part of a broader move towards introducing a more principle-based regulatory regime that would allow greater flexibility for insurers to compete and improve performance.

“Later this year, Bank Negara will consult the industry on risk management standards that insurers are expected to observe as part of this evolution,” he said in his keynote address at the LOMA/LIMRA 17th Annual Strategic Issues Conference yesterday.

The conference, themed The New Global Economy: Resilience in Challenging Times, is jointly organised with the Life Insurance Association of Malaysia.

It aims to serve as a platform for captains of the financial services sectors operating in Asia to discuss the latest development in the industry.

Muhammad said the distribution channels for insurance products and services had also been broadened significantly with the development of bancassurance and financial advisers.

“This will contribute towards enhancing revenue and reducing costs, while enhancing consumer protection and improving the insurance penetration rate in Malaysia,” he said.

In April, Bank Negara announced a liberalisation package for the financial sector aimed at strengthening Malaysia’s economic inter-linkages with other economies and enhancing the role of the financial sector as a key enabler and catalyst of economic growth.

In the insurance sector, the measures included the issuance of new family takaful licences with higher limits of up to 70% on foreign equity participation in insurance companies and takaful operators, and incentives for the consolidation and rationalisation of the insurance industry.

They also included the removal of restrictions on the establishment of branches and bancassurance tie-ups, and greater flexibility to employ specialist expatriates. — Bernama