Public Mutual Fund Agent is No Longer Needed in Malaysia?

In Malaysia, we used to “NO CHOICE” and must go through the mutual fund agent to invest in unit trust or mutual funds. Moving forward is that still necessary? Let's look at the following reasons why I think mutual fund agents/consultants may no longer necessary(physically) in the future .


(1) You Can Now Purchase New Funds Online

We used to required an “agent” or “consultant” to do that for us or we need to go to the bank ourselves to fill-up the initial investment application form. All these steps are no longer needed with the Public Mutual Online. You can basically do everything EXCEPT “standing instruction” and “selling the unit trust units” in public mutual online.


How to Register in Public Mutual Online?

There are few methods but the easiest method is to go through PbeBank.Com. You basically just go to “Investment” → “Public Mutual Online Registration” to request the pin number. Once you have requested the pin number, they will mail you the pin number and you need to activate your pin number within the 30 days in Public Mutual Online website.


(2) You Can also Perform Standing Instruction Investment Online

Many people including many Public Mutual agents do not aware of this service actually can be done online. Yes, it is not done through Public Mutual Online but Public E-Banking instead. These are the steps you need to do when you're in pbebank.com:

1. Go to “Investment->Public Mutual->Investment (Registered)” to register all your Public Mutual fund's accounts.
2. Go to “E-Standing Instruction->E-SI Creation” to request the PAC.
3. Select “Public Mutual Investment – Registered” as Transaction Type
4. Follow the rest of the screen instructions (e.g. First Effective Date, Frequency and Occurrences) to set the standing instructions (e.g Invest RM100 monthly to Public Growth Fund)

Discussion: Do you think mutual fund agent is needed?

So now back to the question, do we still need the agent physically since we can go through all these online? You may disagree with me but these are the 2 KEY reasons I need the unit trust agent. Now all these can be done through online, I'm wondering what's the purpose of those agents anymore?

You may think their consultations, investment advice or recommendations are still valuable. This probably still valuable to some of the people but most of the agents that I've met do not provide really very useful information to me mainly due to the fact that those information I've already known or I can know it from somewhere else (e.g. the prices trend, new launch funds and etc.)

I think moving forward down the road, mutual fund agents are no longer necessary but they should continue to think of a new ways (e.g. expand their role?) to satisfy their customers. I may wrong. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?

Top 10 Hottest Topics Since 2006

These are the top 10 hottest topics (based on number of page views) since this blog was started in 2006. In fact, most of these topics were posted in 2008 and 2009. Let's check it out:

Top 1: Invest Gold in Malaysia Through Public Bank
Here I talked about that you can invest gold in Malaysia through public bank and the reasons why I invest in Gold.

Top 2: Simple Way to Explain Subprime Crisis
This is probably the best post that I've ever had to describe the complex subprime crisis in a very simple way. I rewrite this post at least 3 times to make this as simple as possible. Hopefully, I achieve what I intent to do.

Top 3: FD, Savings, Inflation and EPF Rates in Malaysia
This shows the fixed deposit, savings, Inflation and EPF rates in Malaysia since 1996. Sometimes it is fun to look at the historical trend....

Top 4: Get Rid of Worms in Stomach
Interestingly this post is the top 4 in my blog. I'm not sure whether I should be happy with it or not. Anyway, the video here is disgusting based on some of the readers comments but that is not the whole point...

Top 5: Understand Retrenchment Labor Law in Malaysia
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Top 6: Story of Stuff Summary & Review
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Top 7: How to Calculate Housing and Car Loan
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Top 8: Dell Inspiron 640m Review
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Top 9: Which bank should I choose for best FD rate?
This posts show the latest FD rate (yes, outdated already) and the key message is I personally think that we shouldn't follow which banks offer the best FD rate.

Top 10: Fastest Way to Get Rich By Swisscash
Swisscash was one of the very famous “High Yield Investment Plan” scams. By title it seems like I was supporting it but I”m not. I don't totally against it if you like this kind of stuff and know exactly what you're doing...


P/S: One of the readers commented whether I have other similar useful posts that he was reading. I honestly do not know about it. Perhaps the one that he was reading is the only one that useful. Anyway, I come out this idea just to list out the top 10 highest pages views of all my posts and hopefully you may find some of them to be useful or interesting.

But can number of page views tells these top 10 posts is the most useful one?