When you want to make a photocopy of bank documents some bank might charge you RM1-RM2 per copy whereas you only need to pay RM0.05 – RM0.10 per copy at photocopying center. If you need to certify your bank documents for partial EPF withdrawal to settle your housing loan partially, some bank charge you RM30 – RM50 even if you produce your own documents for Bank officer to certify them.

Recent finding make me wonder what else they won’t charge their customers? For their ATM card they would either give you 3 free ATM transactions and thereafter they would charge you a fee per transaction; or they would charge you RM8 per year for unlimited transaction. Telco sim card is of similar quality and they only charge their customers RM5 during registration and thereafter no charges on sim card. This prompt me to wonder why Bank ATM card entitled bank to charge annual fee of RM8? May be the initial investment cost of hardware and software related to ATM machines is so high that they have to resort to this annual fee? Or just may be the cost of leased line from Telekom Malaysia took a bit bite on their annual income?

RM8 per year might looks small to some but when we assume each bank has about 500,000 saving accounts using ATM cards it will give RM2.5 million annual income to the Bank without any risk (unlike the risk in the case of loan and overdraft facilities). Perhaps Telekom Malaysia Bhd should lower their leased line cost so that banks could pass the saving to their customers and reduce or do away with the annual charge of RM8?

The following is a good example of phishing email:

Dear Customer,

We detected irregular activity on your CIMB Bank account on 16/03/2011. For your protection,you must update your details before you can continue using your online banking. Please visit the CIMB Bank website in this message and validate your details on our new server.

As a result, we require you to confirm and verify your account information by Clicking Here and completing the confirmation process.

You are to bear with us online for 2 minutes as we will be sending you TAC which you will enter on the TAC page.

P.S. The Link in this message will expire within 24 hours.

Thank you,
CIMB Clicks

The link Clicking Here will direct you to :

http://mokathemes.com/wp-includes/pomo/Logon.html

Isn’t it clear this phishing email is send from conman and it has nothing to do with CIMB ?

Fourteen (14) Criminal Breach of Trust cases against the person-in-charge of a security company indicated very clearly that when banks and finance companies entrusted ATM cash transactions to third parties such CBT cases in a way is inevitably as it is difficult to scrutinize the intake of security personnel of the security companies for the job.

Short of man power owing to long-hour duty and unattractive pay have worsened the situation. Now the question is how to avoid such incidence from happening and are customers interest protected from such cases?

If you look at the date of these 14 cases you will notice it happened in 2009 and some friends asked why only now realized the “BIG” problems. Why banks have no knowledge of the shortage until now? That means the system itself is faulty?

After closing several credit cards accounts because of government tax, I noticed I have a few Ringgit credit balance in the credit card accounts. Though all these credit card accounts had been closed by me several years ago, I still receive credit card statement owing to a few Ringgit credit balance.

Have written several letters to ask them to send me a cheque for the amount and close it permanently but they didn’t follow instruction. Maybank credit balance of RM1.95 and they had sent me the statement for the past 5 years!

A friend comment shows my case is not an isolated case but quite common:

“Yes, yes, yes, I also have some RM43 with a bank, written so many letters, but no news, except for monthly statement showing credit balance. Tell me when you get yours back, I swear I will storm to the bank for that 43 ringgit!”

One bank said to use interbank transfer to my bank saving account charging me RM2. But when I wrote email to them to give instruction. They asked me to contact the credit card centre. What the hack! I replied telling them to call me instead and if they want to continue sending statement showing credit balance of RM1.95 or RM15 I don’t mind as postage will be more than credit balance anyway and the credit balance is still there! Just imagine how they waste their resource!

It shows how efficient is our credit card and banking system. Talking about merger of bank and finance companies to compete with foreigners; is it really the reason or just to ‘dilute’ the NPL (non performing loan) outstanding of problem banks and finance companies?

By right, credit card company should send a cheque to customers to settle the outstanding credit balance and close the account. Whether after deduction of outstation cheque commission customer might not get much or anything that is another thing.

I wonder how many trees had fallen to made the statement paper?! And postage wasted to send such credit balance statement!

Recent announcement of new guideline on credit card is nothing new as in the past only those having annual income of RM24,000 could apply for credit card. Therefore, the so called new ruling is nothing new but the same old guideline.

Owing to keen competition and big money that banks and finance companies could earn from the card business, some credit card companies could have relaxed certain terms and conditions so as to build up customers base. This could be the very source of credit card debt building up in Malaysia. The all out promotion of credit card with gifts and zero interest installment could have prompted credit card owners to spend ‘wildly’ without seeing the danger of over-spending.

The ‘new ruling’ of minimum monthly income of RM2,000 could not guarantee new credit card owners ability to repay. Since the credit limit is more or less similar to ‘clean loan’, shouldn’t the banks, finance companies and credit card companies look at how much the credit card could save monthly before granting a credit card with credit limit to the applicants? Applicants could be earning RM10,000 per month but in some cases they could only save RM100 per month owing to high financial commitment therefore it makes no sense to base on monthly income instead of monthly saving.

It sounds good for those who haven’t owned any house. But is it really a sound move for any bank to give 100% loan? Who would ‘guarantee’ the loan when it becomes defaulted? Need less to say, such policy is forcing banking sector to take unnecessary risk especially when loan defaulted, overdue interest, penalty interest and legal fees will bring the total outstanding more than the cost of the house.

The house must be not more than RM200,000 but what kind of house will that be since most of the terrace house prices have gone beyond RM200,000 mark? Unless Malaysian government is going to build low cost houses for the first time buyers.

With the hike of price of so many essential items, how much saving will most people have? The full loan means higher monthly installment making first time house borrowers life miserable. Even if loan period could be extended the ever increasing price hike of daily needs might bring more problem to the first time buyers in the long run, not forgetting bank interest rate is likely to increase in the next few years making it a high risk investment for the first time house buyers.

The comments of Malaysiakini readers reflects how common people perceived such matter (http://malaysiakini.com/news/154249).

I still remember during financial crisis the ex PM Datuk Dr. Mahathir mentioned in newspaper he would sent a few hundred million Ringgit (or in USD?) to Indonesia to help our neighbor. If my memory did not fail me then next question is whether Cabinet knew about it and authorized such transfer of money. If it was on loan to Indonesia, were there any ‘black-and-white’ IOU favoring Malaysia government? If there was none then what would happen next to this money?

Who should be responsible for this transaction?