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After the two series of article on Financial Planning and Financial Planner . Some of you may asked: "Is it difficult to become a Financial Planner? What's the requirement needed?" Hmmm... Good news is it is not difficult, but the bad news is it's not easy either and the requirements for sure will be raised in the future. So, how? In Malaysia, those who practice as Financial Planner must pass any one of below examinations: Registered Financial Planners ( RFP ) issued by Malaysia Financial Planning Council (MFPC) Certified Financial Planners ( CFP ) issued by Financial Planning Association of Malaysia (FPAM) After you have passed the said examination, it doesn't mean that you're a Licensed Financial Planner straight away. Why? It's just serves you an entry passport only. Once you have accredited the qualification, you must apply the required licenses with Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and Securities Commission (SC) before you can carry out financial planning...

As promised, Finance Malaysia blog would like to educate public at large on the importance of personal financial planning , after knowing that most Malaysians falls into debt traps because of this poor financial planning. After finding out, we're surprised that actually not many of us knowing this NEW distribution channel in financial markets --- Financial Planner. The NEW Alternative... Traditionally, when we sourced for financial products or services, we normally go to either agent or bank. Example, for life insurance or unit trust, we buy from life insurance agent or unit trust consultant or banker. This trend continues few years back, when Securities Commission of Malaysia and Bank Negara Malaysia comes out a framework or guidelines introducing financial planning industry. Then, financial planning firms emerge, until only recently some of us would have heard about its existence in the market place. Of course, financial planners came into picture too. Role of a Financial Planner...

We can't deny that everyone of us can't runaway from financial matters, thus, planning it wisely would put you on a better path to achieve financial goals as desired. Does this called "financial planning"? Hmmm...  Many people think that financial planning is for high-income earner and the rich. But is this true? If not, what is it actually? Generally, financial planning is a journey to achieve financial goals set with a comprehensive and systematic step-by-step process . It involves taking a broad view of one's financial affairs covering many areas of wealth management. What's Included in Financial Planning? Cash Flow management: assessing your current financial net worth budgeting debts eliminations building savings Insurance planning ensuring that our assets and family are well protected by having adequate insurance coverage Investment planning this is the wealth accumulation step, whereby investing a portion of your savings with the aim of getting a higher...

This is one of the common question asked by potential PRS contributors. First, I want to emphasis that PRS is a long-term investment for the purpose of retirement planning . In investment case, long-term means you already using the most powerful method to reap a good return. Anyway, many contributors still want to treat PRS as some kind of short-term investment. I got the answer for you. Basically, PRS is very similar to unit trust investment. The underlying structure and investment philosophy were the same actually. No wonder many people perceived PRS is another unit trust scheme. Yes, you're correct to a certain extent. Under the guidelines, each PRS providers must at least launched their core funds for investors to select, namely Growth , Moderate and Conservative . To make things simple, we only discussed these core funds because I believe most of us only invest in core funds.  From these core funds, growth fund is the most aggressive one. In other words, the most risky one, w...

Many people are still in the dark on how actually Private Retirement Scheme (PRS) works. In order to clear  everyone's  mind, we hope this post was timely for those who may want to entitle for extra tax relief of up to RM 3,000 given by PRS before 31st December 2012. To further explain the whole scheme, Finance Malaysia Blog was glad that Alex Yeoh, a licensed financial planner is able to share with us on this matter. By Alex Yeoh, First we must know that PRS is a voluntary scheme for the purpose of retirement saving.  For ease of understanding, let us look at the picture above which explain the process into two parts. Initially, contributions were made by us into the PRS fund that we select. It was as flexible as  normal unit trust investments (shown in upper part). Contribute anytime any amount  as you like ,  without any specific intervals. As simple as that. When can I withdraw the money? Each time, your contributions were split and maintained in sub-...

31 st Oct 2012 would be a historic day for Malaysia financial planning industry with the launching of newly formed Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) at Lanai Kijang, Bank Negara Malaysia. From now onwards, AFA will effectively represent all the Licensed Financial Advisers and Corporate Unit Trust Advisers (CUTA) Firms. The association is approved by Registrar of Societies on the 16 th August 2012 with the support from Bank Negara Malaysia. In conjunction with its launching, AFA also held its inaugural financial advisers conference titled “ Charting New Frontier – FA the Future ”. During the conference, audiences were empowered with up to date practices by Bank Negara and Securities Commission. Then, an interesting forum on the Future of Malaysia Financial Advisers Industry was discussed with everyone attentions. How we benchmark ourselves with other countries? We heard some success stories from Singapore and Hong Kong. It was a successful milestone event for financial planners...