Nice Tatoo

Last few weeks, I accompany my friend to talk to a unit trust personnel at a local bank after she found out that my friend's account has been idling for some time and wanted to recommend new unit trusts to invest in.

The agent was a very young and pretty girl, heck all her fellow colleagues have considerable beauty.

I saw the name card and I was shock: Wow..manager at such a young age!

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Maybank has also its online unit trust buying services thru Maybank2u. Looks like this field is going to be competitive as mutual fund agents will need to compete with these online "agents". IMHO, i still think being a mutual fund agent is a sunset industry unless you are the top 5%-10% of the agents. Margins are just to little and honestly other marketing fields such as insurance, real estate, MLM, will writing, etc are more rewarding.

I look thru the list of unit trust offered by Maybank2u. As expected, the list of funds does not contain the funds of its competitor namely Public Mutual & CIMB related funds. Is it a taboo to sell your competitor's product?  This argument applies to CIMB. If this happen, Maybank can earn commission selling CIMB's unit trust funds, while CIMB can access a larger customer base aka Maybank's customer.

Simple comparison shows that CIMBClicks offered more number of different funds online as compared to Maybank2u.

As for Public Mutual, this strategy make sense as it need to preserve the rice bowl of its multitude of Public Mutual agents.

Here are the commission rates and the various unit trust offered  by Maybank2u. Click here. 

Just follow these simple steps:

1. Log in to your Maybank2u account
2. Click “Investment” on the main menu tab
3. Click “Unit Trust”

Features available:

• View Portfolio Holdings – View your Unit Trust account summary with estimated profit & loss based on the latest available Net Asset Value (NAV).
• View Transaction History – View the Unit Trust transaction history of your Unit Trust account for the last 90 days which include both online and over-the-counter transactions.
• View Transaction Status – View the status of your Unit Trust transaction for the last 90 days.
• Subscription – Purchase or top up Unit Trust fund online.
• Redemption – Cash out or sell the units of funds that you are holding.
• Switching – Perform switching of existing fund to other funds under the same Fund House/Fund Manager.

Maybank2u Online Unit Trust Services are available from 6:00am to 11:59pm every day.

Here is some related post on unit trust buying thru CIMBCLICKs.

CIMBClicksEInvest's Complete Funds 

CIMBClicksEInvest - An Easy Way To Buy Mutual Funds

Fixed Deposit Rate For Malaysian Banks 2009 

How To Know Your Unit Trust Agent Is Real 

Public Mutual Fund Management: Please Take Note!! 

Tracking Your Mutual Fund Performance In Malaysia

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EPF stands for Employee Provident Fund Not Elite Penguin Force (I found this logo is from a WII game)

I guess every knows that EPF holds our hard earn money that we are "forced" to contribute each month. Ever wonder what are the stocks the EPF fund managers are holding to give the more than fixed deposit rate dividend unfailingly each year?

Last year 2011, EPF distributed 6% of dividends back to us. Well, 6% can be very little to some people especially those that dabble in stocks, property, forex trading, option trading & etc. (But at least it is better than nothing, and EPF have NOT YET FAIL to deliver the dividend back to us). I read somewhere that by law, EPF is only require to a minimum dividend of 2.5% each year.(My assumption is that EPF makes money during that year. Correct me if I am wrong, so far I think EPF never lost money before since its inception!! :D)

Nevertheless, you can also use your EPF to invest in Mutual funds.

Here are some of my earlier write-ups if you want to know more:

Public Mutual Fund List

http://www.knowthymoney.com/2011/06/public-mutual-funds-approved-by-epf.html

CIMB Wealth Advisor

http://www.knowthymoney.com/2011/07/list-of-epf-investment-funds-by-cimb.html

Historical EPF Dividend Table

Year	Per Annum
1952 - 1959	2.50
1960 - 1962	4.00
1963	5.00
1964	5.25
1965 - 1967	5.50
1968 - 1970	5.75
1971	5.80
1972 - 1973	5.85
1974 - 1975	6.60
1976 - 1978	7.00
1979	7.25
1980 - 1982	8.00
1983 - 1987	8.50
1988 - 1994	8.00
1995	7.50
1996	7.70
1997 - 1998	6.70
1999	6.84
2000	6.00
2001	5.00
2002	4.25
2003	4.50
2004	4.75
2005	5.00
2006	5.15
2007	5.80
2008	4.50
2009	5.65
2010	5.80
2011	6.00

List Of Top 30 Equity Investments Listed On Bursa Malaysia By Quarter As At 31 March 2012 No. Share % Holdings 1.  Msian Building Society Bhd 65.50% 2.  RHB Capital Bhd 44.99% 3.  Msian Resources Corp Bhd   42.20% 4.  Media Prima Bhd                       18.52% 5.  Shell Refining Co. Bhd 17.03% 6.  Public Bank Bhd                 16.83% 7.  WCT Bhd                         16.34% 8.  Digi.Com Bhd                                              16.29% 9.  Dialog Bhd                        14.87%  10.  Genting Plantations Bhd                                       14.52% 11.  Tenaga Nasional Bhd 14.36% 12.  IJM Corporation Bhd                           14.35% 13.  United Plantations Bhd                      13.36% 14.  Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd    13.29% 15.  Alliance Financial Group Bhd       13.25% 16.  Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd     13.00% 17.  Star Publications Bhd                                     12.93% 18.  IJM Plantations Bhd                              12.81% 19.  Axis Reit Managers                            12.48% 20.  AMMB Holdings Bhd                                       12.43% 21.  Sime Darby Bhd                         12.38% 22.  Petronas Gas Bhd   12.21% 23.  Kencana Petroleum Bhd 12.08% 24.  KPJ Healthcare Bhd       12.08% 25.  Hong Leong Bank Bhd   12.02% 26.  IOI Corporation Bhd         11.74% 27.  Axiata Group Bhd                  11.71% 28.  CIMB Group Holdings Bhd                    11.65% 29.  Malayan Banking Berhad 11.44% 30.  POS Malaysia Bhd 11.38%

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I "Managed" to invest in Amanah Saham Malaysia during a time where not many people were that interested to buy in. (~ April 2009) It was a short queue at the bank and to my surprise, I managed to open an account and buy into a investment that guarantees me a ~6-8% dividends per annum (I want to park some spare cash & just don't bother about it for years ) from the Malaysian government. Luckily, there were no cases of system hang, system down at the banks.

Amanah Saham Malaysia begun offering a 2nd round investment/subscription for the public around July 2009 due to the HOT demand (I thought that government was running out of money, there were a series of new funds and government sukuks). That is when all hell broke lose when the majority of people realized that with a weakening economy background, Amanah Saham is the best and safest bet to park their money. 

Nevertheless, after 2 years of investing in this fund, I decided to update my passbook. I have no idea how much is my total investment after the dividends. (I am lazy to calculate it mysel) So i decided to look where and how to update my passbook . I just want to know the process. (Engineer trait..lol)

At first, I thought I could view it online using CIMBClicks once I entered my details.  There are a few online agents for Amanah Saham National, namely Maybank2u, CIMBClicks, AffinOnline. 

Online Agent  Branches

	- Main Counter & ASNB Offices - ASNB Agents (CIMB/RHB/MBB/POS)
	- Main Counter & ASNB Offices - ASNB Agents (CIMB/RHB/MBB/POS)
	- Main Counter & ASNB Offices - ASNB Agents (CIMB/RHB/MBB/POS)

But after reading the FAQ for CIMBClicks, I found out that you can only use it to BUY new funds.

And being a Chinese, this statement below is NOT applicable to me since I saw this reply at CIMBClick's website.

1.

Where can I subscribe for my additional ASNB investment?

You can perform additional ASNB investments via CIMB Clicks, any CIMB Bank branches, ASNB offices and ASNB agents. Additional investment through CIMB Clicks only available for ASNB Fixed Price Fund* (ASB, ASW 2020, ASD, ASM & AS 1 MALAYSIA). *Subscriptions of funds are subject to funds availability. Note : ASM, ASD & ASW are fully subscribed, AS1M for Chinese allocation is fully subscribed while ASB is available for Bumiputeras only. So I thought since we can go online to subscribe ASNB investment, there must be a way to view my total investment in Amanah Saham Malaysia. To my disappointment, the answer is there is NO way to do viewing online. T.T 18. Can I view my ASB account balance via CIMB Clicks? This service is not available at the present time. You may check your balance at any CIMB Bank branches, ASNB offices and ASNB agents. Hence, it means that you can only subscribe online but you will NOT be able to see your overall total investments. So basically, when you subscribe, the online system will only able to tell you whether the subscription is successful or not. So the general public needs to go the nearest physical branch of ASNB agents to update their passbook. This also applies to selling/cashing out your investments. 15. Can I withdraw my ASB investment via CIMB Clicks? No, you can’t. At the present time, you can only purchase additional investments via CIMB Clicks. Withdrawal must be done over the counter at CIMB Bank branches and fully operational ASNB offices and ASNB Agents. So off I went to the nearest ASNB agent. 1st stop Maybank branch: Result: system down. Then I went to RHB Bank, the teller told me that I can only update my passbook next week. Argghh..... that is why I hate paper transactions. (I received a bucketful of them every month..so many paper statements!!) I do see a few people filling up ASNB forms at the branches. Perhaps, there is a new subscription issue ; that might explain why the system goes down again. But I never heard any new subscription offered for non-bumiputeras.  If there were new offerings, I bet there will be tons of people queuing up to give money to the ASNB. So upon googling, the high probability event: People cashing out of their investments after the suspension of transaction ended. This might explain why I can only update my passbook next week. (Too much workload for the bankers or system down due to heavy transactions)

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There no such thing as low risk but high return investments!! Except scams!

I bought this capital protected fund investing in commodities at the height of the 2008 bear market. I bought it because, i expected that the commodities will eventually rise with the recovery and also gold aka precious metal will rise as the dollar loses its value because of the quantitative easing by the FEDs. 

Below is the performance of my fund that I bought. I thought it will at least yield me 5% annualized returns. (Heck even my govt SUKUK yielded me 5% and no service charge!!) Commodities aka precious metals, palm oil were on the rise!! Heck this year alone, gold has risen like 20-30%!! And yet i still get fixed deposit returns.

3 Reasons why I will avoid capital protected fund in the future are:

1. I am bounded to stay vested in the fund for 3 long years!! If i withdraw or sell prematurely, i will get penalized around ~1% if i am not mistaken for the 1st year, and lesser amount as we reach the 3yr maturity. ~1% is alot considering that it only yielded 3% returns per year.

2. When the market recovers, this fund did not managed to capture the rise and hence the dismal performance. The main reason is that to do a capital protected fund, ~90-95% of the fund is invested in zero coupon bonds. (something like very low yielding fixed deposit. This is designed to protect the erosion of the value of money due to inflation. More detail from Wikipedia: A zero-coupon bond (also called a discount bond or deep discount bond) is a bond bought at a price lower than its face value, with the face value repaid at the time of maturity.^[1]). So only the remaining ~5% is used to invest in commodities.  That is why the fund cannot performed good enough compared to equity type funds.

3. There is a 3.5% service fee when i buy into the fund. Ouch..with this low return, it really ate into my returns. I better put my money into fixed deposit or sukuk funds by the government. I expect more sukuk issuance as the economic condition worsens. Remember that government is too dependent on income taxes as a source of income. (around 41%). Lower wages, or higher unemployment will hurt their revenue.

P.S I am recalling the figures above by memory. (This was 3 years ago!!) But I think i am right to a certain extent. 

So my learning for 2011 is to AVOID Capital Protected Fund types NO MATTER what exciting sector it invests in. I will tell you next time what are the types that I like and will buy in the coming future when the market tanks. I was a mistake on my part even ( I think i could not find any pure commodity funds at that time) though I picked the correct sectorial play that is commodities.

Good thing is that the fund has matured, and I will withdraw my money from this under-performing fund (at least to my expectation) soon this month :)

Performance History

2011-09-30

Growth of $10,000 (MYR)

•  Fund
• -
• 11.01
• -0.04
• 0.40

•  +/-Cat
• -
• 1.60
• 11.42
• 0.45

•  +/-Idx
• -
• -
• -
• -

Category: Capital Protected

Index:

• Trailing Returns(%)
• 2011-10-07

• YTD Return
• 0.12

• 1 Year
• 3.35

• 3 Years Annualised
• 3.14

• 5 Years Annualised
• -

Benchmarks

Fund Benchmark

Maybank 12-month Fixed Deposit Rate

Morningstar Benchmark

Key Stats

• Morningstar Qualitative Rating™
• 

• Morningstar Category
• Morningstar Rating™
  

• Capital Protected
• 

• GIFS

• -

• ISIN
• Inception Date

• -
• 2008-09-02

• NAV(2011-10-07)
• Day Change

• MYR 1.03
• 0.18%

• Bid Price
• Offer Price

• -
• -

• Total Net Assets (Mil)
  (2011-09-30)
• Total Expense Ratio
  (2010-10-31)

• USD 4.86
• 0.18 %

• Front Load Fee(Max)
• Redemption Fee

• 3.50 %
• 1.50 %

• Employee Provident Fund

• No

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