A sequel to the animated “Money As Debt” video by Paul Grignon- Money As Debt II- Promises Unleashed.

The author has done it again in this very educational and informative video where he reveals all the tricks and social-conditioning by the power-that-be which has been on-going for decades. Such manipulation eventually leads to the collapse of the financial system as we see it in the West. Before you label it as just another conspiracy theory, try finishing the video first before passing any judgments.

Part 7 is where it gets exciting, where the author predicts about the future of the monetary system- digital money.

In fact, our very own monetary system in Malaysia is no better, it’s just that the effect of the flawed monetary system is not as amplified here, simply because the consumers here are not yet on steroids.

The 77-minutes video is a quite a long stretch, but I can guarantee you that after watching it, you’ll think twice again about entrusting your hard-earned money with any financial institutions, if it’s even yours in the first place ;-)

The decision to purchase a car is easily one of the biggest financial decisions you have to make after the decision of owning a real estate property. The average consumers are easily convinced with the ‘low’ interest rate, free gifts that comes with the purchase and even direct cash rebates.

Since most of the car salespeople are more concern on selling more cars, it’s often not easy for you to figure out the actual ownership cost of a car. For some people, getting a new car can sometimes be an emotional decision. With the recent retrenchment trend and uncertain times, many Malaysians are putting off their car purchases. Putting food on the table and paying the bills has become the priority of the day.

To ensure that your new car purchase does not burden you financially, it’s important to see through the high-pressured sales messages that bombards you every time you go to the car showrooms. You have to take into account many other factors before you drive your dream car home.

Hence, I have come up with an easy to use calculator to help you do just that- calculate your actual cost of owning a car.

You can download the spreadsheet here: Malaysia Car Ownership Calculator

On the side note, I am always in favor of purchasing pre-owned cars ;-)

It’s rather strange that PNB is opening up the quota which was reserved for Bumiputras to all Malaysians. Not that I have anything against this new policy. I just don’t remember PNB doing this in the past, during the good economic times.

This further confirms my suspicion that the government is in need a lot of cash. Remember, they’ve only just launched the Sukuk Simpanan Rakyat and declared new units simultaneously for ASW2020 and ASM earlier this year.

(Business Times) Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) will offer the remaining 1.6 billion Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM) units, including those initially set aside for bumiputras, for subscription by all Malaysians from July 21.

President and group chief executive Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman said to ensure a fair distribution to the public, a maximum limit of 20,000 units had been set per account holder during the offer period from July 21-27. The limit would be void after the offer period.

??hereafter, investors can subscribe for the ASM units without any maximum investment limit, depending on the amount of units left.

??ales of the additional ASM units are based on a first-come, first-served basis,??he told reporters here yesterday.

ASM is an equity-income fund aimed at providing unitholders with a long-term investment opportunity that generates regular and competitive returns through a diversified portfolio of investments.

According to Hamad, the remaining 1.6 billion ASM units are from the 3.33 billion units launched in April.

And to add to all my observations, our local share market has been acting rather against the regional tide, don’t you think?

Contributed by KC Wong

Before you start calling the property agents and viewing your next dream home, the first thing you must do is to set the budget. Below are some helpful way to set a realistic budget:

1) Cash in Hand
You must have more than 10% of the total property price. The amount of cash in hand must be enough to make the 10% deposit payment and for the legal fees.

2) EPF Account
As at the point of this writing, you are allowed to withdraw the money in your EPF account 2 to purchase the house.

Here is an example of the calculations on how much you can withdraw based on the salary you get monthly:-

Salary = RM 5,000

Monthly EPF Contribution
= 12% (employer) +11% (employee)
= 23%
= RM5,000 x 23 %
= RM 1,150

Amount for EPF Account 2
= 30% x Monthly EPF Contribution
= 30% RM1,150
= RM 345

There are 2 type of withdraw methods you can opt for:

Method A: Withdraw for maximum of 10% of the property price.

You can withdraw not more than 10% of the total property price with the minimum saving balance of RM500 in the EPF account 2. You only can withdraw the money with the sales and purchase agreement of the property. Upon approval, EPF will bank in the money into your personal bank account.

You can refer to the link below for the details: http://www.kwsp.gov.my/index.php?ch=p2members&pg=en_p2members_wdrawtype&ac=1850

Method B: Withdraw for monthly house loan installment.

You can withdraw your EPF savings to pay for the monthly installment as long as your Account 2 meets the minimum balance of RM500. The money will be transferred from KWSP directly into your bank.

You can refer to the link below for the details: http://www.kwsp.gov.my/index.php?ac=2197&ch=p2news&pg=en_p2news_press

You are not allowed to choose both methods above at the same time. You only can apply for the Method (a). After 3 years, you may apply for Method (b) with the minimum saving balance of RM500 in the EPF account 2.

3) Monthly Installment

As a general rule of thumb, your total monthly installment for all your existing loans, together with the loan you are applying, must not exceed 80% of your total monthly income.

Current monthly income = RM5,000

Your maximum monthly installment for your loan
= RM 5,000 x 80 %
= RM 4,000

Assume currently you have car loan with RM2,200 monthly installment. Your remaining monthly installment after you deduct with car loan:

= RM 4,000 ??RM 1,200 = RM 2,800

Hence, you are only allowed to apply for a housing loan package whereby the monthly installment is not more than RM2,800.

4) Housing Loan Package
You need to survey on which bank offer the best package with the lowest interest.

You can go to this website to check on all the packages offer by the bank in Malaysia.
http://www.money3.com.my/MalaysiaFinancialTool/HomeLoan/LoanFinder.aspx?SMId=1

A Typical Web Development Project
So, it?? finally time for you to look into building an online presence for your company?? website? Or it?? about time that you revamp the website after hearing from your boss that the website is looking really dull for the 999th times.

I would assume that you have a budget for your web development project. I wouldn?? go into how you should come up with this budget, but a budget would give the developer and yourself a rough idea on the scale of the development. You cannot have a RM799.00 budget and ask for everything under the sun. A budget would also allow you to prioritize what features to include in your website, and what features should be implemented in the subsequent phase of your web development pipeline.

Ok, after the Management has approved your budget, what should you do next? Naturally, the next step is to find a competent developer who can deliver the project fast, cheap and beyond expectations, as unrealistic as that might sound.

So, you post up the jobs, ask around your friends who?? in the IT business and do a search on Google for ??alaysia cheap and good web design companies??or ??heap web designers??or even ??reelancers who work for free?? And after that, you shortlist 5 of them and asked each them to give you a quote. And you waited for a few days before all the quotes come in, and after looking at the figures you decided to meet with 2 of the cheapest one, and one that quoted the highest (just because you were curious why this particular designer is so different from the rest).

And after interviewing each of them, you finally nail down one company, let?? call them Super SEO Sdn Bhd, and the project begins by paying the web development company a 15% down payment. The project usually begins with Super SEO collecting all the information that you want to put up on to the web for the world to see. All the annual reports, the magazine scans and all your interviews with the newspapers. Next, you also require Super SEO to come up with a few prototypes to give you the ??ook and feel??of the design. As a matter of fact, you don?? really know what you want, but heck, you can always change your mind, right?

And so it goes on for a few weeks, with Super SEO proposing their revised color scheme for the Nth times, while you continue to browse at your competitors??website to see what they??e been up to lately, and to see if there?? any cool features that you might be able to ??teal??from them.

If all of the above sounds familiar to you, then you??e very likely to find yourself with a website that did not bring in any positive impact in your sales. Well, at least now your company has a website, and you can include the cool URL on your name card and ironically, other than the URL, there?? really nothing inside the website that you could really shout about to your potential visitor. You begin to wonder why did you spend RM8,000 on the web development project.

My advice? Just get a domain name and have a single page with your company?? address on it. That will probably only cost you about RM150.00. Nothing to shout about either, but it?? going to have the same impact on your name card.

Hold it, now you??e saying that you are really, really serious about building your online presence and how else, other than the method explained above, can you go about it?

Who?? the Architect?
Here?? what I??l propose, and I think this would definitely work much better than the commonly-used method illustrated earlier.

First, you must know what you want out of the website, and how the website will affect your business?? bottom line. No web developers on this planet can give you this answer, simply because they are just that- web developers. They know nuts about your business, and probably won?? be interested to listen to you brag about your rag-to-riches stories.

Contrary to what you may have been told, if you are going to build a website that works for you, the key architect of the site is none other than you and the people in your company. If it?? a revamp of your existing website, the feedbacks that you??e gathered from previous visitors, clients and the web statistics will also be an important source of information in working out the blueprint of your web development project.

You should be the person deciding the metrics you want to benchmark the website with. How many visitors are you expecting after the revamp? What keywords do you want to position your website with? Which languages do you think you should translate your site into? Which countries are most likely search about your industry and what kind of search engines do they use? Do you have a department in your company that would be able to tap into the company?? web resources and improve their service delivery?

And if you still think that your web developer is going to do all these for you, you?? better rethink your purpose of developing/revamping the website.

The Blue Print is All You Need
So, it?? really not rocket science. What I am really suggesting is that you need to first identify your web development?? need. Figure out the benchmarking metrics of your website and the conversion ratios you are hoping to accomplish. Let everyone in the company chip in and contribute in the planning phase. Get the blueprint of your project done and make changes whenever a better idea or suggestions come along. It?? 80% cheaper to change the features on the drawing board than after you??e got your website up on the net.

It?? very tempting to hire a web developer based on their portfolio and their client base. Yes, these are important attributes which will help you determine whether they can deliver what you want, how you want it and when you want it. Yet, it?? even more important to engage a web developer who listens to your needs and can help to ensure your blueprint is realistic and achievable. An experienced web developer who can help you to come up with the final blueprint can also dramatically reduce your risk. The blueprint will usually only be a fraction of the entire project cost, but it?? also the foundation of the entire project. With this blueprint, you will have a clear idea of what to expect from the website and you can even bring around this blueprint to any web designing companies which can execute the blueprint for you, exactly the way you want it. Again, this can help to further reduce your development cost and also to ensure that you will not be ??urprised??with the end product.

Conclusion
A website is becoming one of the most important tools in an organization?? public communication strategy. You can deliver an impressive message by providing the information that your visitors are searching for with the least effort or you can be turning off potential customers with a few badly designed product purchasing forms.

Whatever it is, I would like to emphasize again my point: Your website is your business!

The battle of the premium rebate continues, with Perwakim holding a peaceful picket last Tuesday…

Via InsuranceOnline.my…

(Business Times) PERWAKIM, an association of general insurance agents in Malaysia, has submitted a memorandum to Bank Negara protesting the central bank?? proposal to give rebates on premiums for consumers that renew their motor insurance directly with insurance firms.

They claim that the move, which takes effect from today, would adversely affect consumers, agents and the insurance industry in general.

Perwakim president Liza Lau said a copy of the memorandum was also handed to the office of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Human Resources.

Lau led more than 50 agents in a peaceful picket in front of Bank Negara yesterday. The crowd dispersed after about two hours.

She said there are a total of 50,000 insurance agents nationwide of which 40 per cent are full-time agents.

Insurance agents earn a 10 per cent commission from the insurance companies.

If you’ve missed the previous rounds, here’s a summary of what happened so far:

1) BNM has approved General Insurance companies in Malaysia to give premium rebates to direct customers.

2) Direct customers would meant customers who approach the General Insurers directly (walk-in, through the internet, direct mailing and the telemarketing channel). In short, any method that does not go through sales agents or intermediaries.

3) The beef of the issue mainly lies with the motor insurance rebate, as this was ‘once’ considered the iron rice bowl for most agents. What happened was after the premium rebate was approved, customers who renew their motor insurance directly will receive 5% premium rebate in the first year of implementation and 10% thereafter.

4) For other types of general insurance products, the General Insurers are given flexibility by BNM in the rate of premium rebates.

If you haven’t read about my previous take on the issue, you can head over here: Duit Kopi.

Today, I would like to re-look into this issue from another perspective.

These general insurance agents did not get all worked up for nothing. There’s some element of betrayal here. Yes, for some consumers, these agents might not have deserved the 10% extra premium, but I would say that for any agents serious in the general insurance business, most of them are providing much better service from say, a typical General Insurer’s front-line customer service consultants or helpline operators. Imagine trying to get an answer from these front-line customer service consultants on the market value or to get a quotation for your vehicle. And compare this with a general insurance agent who is not under the direct payroll of the General Insurer. I can safely bet that the latter will be relatively more responsive and efficient. Most of everyone I know have had bad experience with 1800 customer service numbers.

Another aspect that was overlooked by the authority on the implementation of this premium rebate is the compensation for loss of income. Sure, it’s arguable and almost impossible to determine the value of these general insurance agents in soliciting businesses for the General Insurers, but what about the existing customer base that these hardworking general insurance agents have built for these General Insurers. How is the new premium rebate compensating for the historical loyalty of these agents? Yes, you can argue again that if the agent’s service is good, the customers are most likely going to stick around, but who’s to say otherwise? Malaysians being Malaysians, it’s very common to see customers throwing out loyalty out the window the moment they see the word ‘DISCOUNT’. In Malaysia, it’s easily one of the most emotional phrase after ‘FREE’. So, what is the authority’s policy on the compensation of businesses lost incurred directly on the once loyal sales force?

The next issue is about ethical and fairness. How is the agent able to compete fairly with the General Insurer? Imagine a supplier marketing their product directly to the consumers. What’s going to happen to the retailer? Okie, that might not be a good analogy, since you can always debate that the retailer who don’t add value should never have existed in the first place. But remember again, these retailers has been marketing the supplier’s product since the beginning of time. And suddenly the supplier just decided to cut into the scene, without any form of compensation and even offering rebates that will wipe off the entire retailer network. I can smell a commercial lawsuit coming up. The least these General Insurers could do is to offer the same pricing, without premium rebate and play the game like an ethical sportsman.

That’s my piece of mind. I think the General Insurers are taking these general insurance agents for a ride by providing double pricing and standards on their products, and BNM being the respected Regulatory Body should have taken more time before implementing this policy, ensuring it’s a win-win situation.