Invest Gold in Malaysia through Public Bank

Finally here comes the “easiest way” to invest Gold in Malaysia. Last month in April, Public Bank announced a Gold Investment Account that allows you to purchase the purest available gold commodity.

You’re no longer need to invest Gold indirectly (e.g. mutual funds that invest in Gold). Whether you want to buy gold directly or indirectly in Malaysia is it always not that convenient (to me) although there are few companies offer this. Most importantly (to me) I’m not sure those company is trustable.


Why I Invest in Gold?

(1) I’m inspired by Jamy - a friend of mine. She earns a lot of money investing in commodities and recommends me and most of us to invest in Gold. See the interesting conversation we had in my previous post.

(2) Last year, gold prices jumped 31% since the end of World War II. Maybe one year of history does not really convincing. Let’s look at chart below, 5 years is about increased by 200% and 10 years is about 400%.

Source: goldprice.org

(3) I invest in property, unit trust and stocks but just not commodities. Why don’t I give it a try? :)

(4) With the recent increase of oil price, do you still think that property, unit trust, stock or whatever investment can still overcome the inflation rate? Which investment has higher chances to overcome inflation? If you look at the history of gold price, it seems like the one.


How to invest Gold through Public Bank?

1. Go to any Public Bank in Malaysia. Press the “Customer Service” button and wait for your turn.
2. Tell them you want to invest in Gold. They will get your I/C and prepare the Gold Investment Account book for you.
3. Then, later you need to take this Gold Investment Account to the normal counter (No need to press for a number, just straight away go to any counter) and they will settle everything for you.
4. If you have Public Bank Saving account, you can buy Gold by transferring money from your saving account or you can just buy in cash.
5. Finally, you will get this book! This book is exactly same with the normal saving account book. When you want to invest next time, just take this book to normal counter. It is really very that convenient.

Please note that the initial gold investment is 20g. I bought it at RM 99.72 per gram which is RM 1994.4 for 20g investment. The subsequent minimum trading would be 5g.

Remember this is neither a saving account nor the fixed deposit (i.e. FD), this account would not pay any interest and the minimum 2g of gold must be maintained to ensure the account remains active. You can not deposit the physical Gold but you can withdraw the physical gold in denominations of 100g, 500g and 1,000g.

[Service Fee]
RM 10 annual service fee will be ducted from your saving account if your Gold Investment Accounts falls below 10 grams as at year end.

To know more about Gold Investment in Public Bank, check out their official website announcement.

[Updated: 2 June 2008]
I just found out MayBank also offer the similar package - Gold Saving Passbook Account. [Updated: 22 Sept 2011]: The MayBank link for Gold Saving Passbook account is no longer valid and I lazy to update it here.You can try Google it and find it out. It is kind of stupid for website (and some more this is bank) that do not maintain consistent URL and keep changing the URL. See,  Public Bank has no such problem? The link is still valid since 2008 until today...

[Updated: 17 August 2008]
To get the latest Gold Price in RM, you can refer to the public bank website here.

[Updated: 15 Jan 2011]

1. You can watch the latest gold history trend (1,5 and 10 years) in MYR and USD for  here. 
2. Also, you can now perform Gold Trading (sales and purchase) through Public Bank Online (i.e. PBeBank). What you need to do is to enable the "Gold Trading" in your Public Bank online account and you can start buying or selling your gold in grams.

P/S: One final note here, there are no 100% guarantee in investment. It is all depending on the supply and demand. When more and more gold mine to be discovered, the Gold Price will drop. Another risk is the global recession that caused by the U.S. recession which will lead to a fall in demand for commodities. Good luck!

How do you deal with Credit Card Fraud?

Perhaps you may not aware that credit card transaction is not secure at all. As long as you’re using credit cards, there are chances that you may face the credit card fraud. When you have credit card fraud, how should you do with it? Most importantly how do you prevent it from happen again?


Types of Credit Card Fraud

Cloned credit card is the most common type of credit card fraud. As long as someone can get your credit card, they can clone your credit card by copying your credit card information on to a fake card’s magnetic stripe. It used to be very popular but no longer true after the government enforce all the credit cards that used must be implemented with the embedded “chip”. With this “chip” implemented, the cloning fraud can be prevented.

Surprisingly, this embedded “chip” is not enforced in U.S. I find out this every time when I have visitors from U.S and they always complain that their credit cards cannot be used in Malaysia. This is due to the fact that only the credit card with embedded “chip” can be used in Malaysia or perhaps the Asia Pacific.

Another common type of credit card fraud is online transaction. As long as they know your credit card number, 3 digits behind your credit card, and the expired date, they can purchase anything online on your behalf. This information can be easily obtained when you pay your bill using credit cards in a restaurant. Can you see how insecure the credit card is?


What should you do? Know your rights!

The first thing when you realize your credit card is lost or any transactions that do not belong to you, report to the bank as soon as possible. The second thing is you must know your liability and rights. Different country has different rules.

In Malaysia, the Bank Negara Malaysia’s credit card guidelines effectively limit a card holder’s liability for unauthorised transaction to RM250. That means the bank cannot charge you more than RM250 for unauthorized transaction. This is providing that you do not take part in the fraudulent transaction and reported the lost or stolen credit card as soon as possible.

In Singapore, you have to pay for all the fraudulent transactions that occur before your card is reported stolen or lost. In UK, you’re limited to pay £ 50 for fraudulent transactions. In U.S. the maximum liability that cardholders have to pay for unauthorized use of a credit card is USD 50.


How to Prevent Credit Card Fraud?

1. Periodically check that all your credit cards are still with you.
2. Destroy all copies of credit card’s receipts, airline tickets and any documents that display your credit card numbers.
3. Carry out online transactions only with reputable companies. Ensure that the websites have security features.
4. Avoid responding email that request for credit card information.

Lastly, I would recommend you to copy down the Customer Services' Phone number to a safe place. It is located at the back for your credit card. Just in case when you lost your credit cards, you can call this number immediately.

I hope this helps. Have you experienced the credit card fraud before? Any tips to share?