Members of the public speak with AKPK staff at their booth during the EPF Retirement Programme.
KUCHING: Managing your finances – especially loans and debts – is an important step towards retirement planning, highlights the Agensi Kaunseling dan Pengurusan Kredit (AKPK).
According to AKPK head of Sarawak region Marlene Margaret Nichol, prudent financial management is the key towards managing your life well and ensuring quality of living especially during the golden years.
“We are complementing EPF’s (Employee Provident Fund) services in terms of retirement planning via delivering talks for retirement planning.
“We advise folks of what to do and when is good time to plan for retirement,” she said during the EPF Retirement Programme held over the weekend.
Individuals are encouraged to think about retirement when they begin to work, Marlene added, noting that retirmenet planning is a long term process.
“When you reach the time to retire, it should be a happy time for you without having to worrk about your finances at that point in time.
“To reach that stage, you should always plan for your retirement as soon as you enter the work force. It is never too early to plan for your retirement.”
The AKPK head of Sarawak region also advises the public to hould settle all debts before retiring.
A major highlight is its Debt Management Programme (DMP), whereby AKPK assists financially distressed consumers to regain financial control – a service the agency is providing for free.
The agency does so by helping borrowers to work out budgets that will help them meet their loan obligations and living expenses, thereby minimising non-performing loans and foreclosure of houses.
Individual borrowers can seek AKPK’s assistance in rescheduling or restructuring their housing loans, hire purchase loans and personal loans or outstanding credit/charge card balance due to financial service providers under the purview of Bank Negara Malaysia.
“Since our inception in 2006 up to June this year, AKPK has seen a total of 20,576 counselling cases and 10,430 cases for its Debt Management Programme from Kuching itself,” she said.
On a national comparison, total counselling cases from 2006 to June 2017 exceeded the half-million mark to reach 590,488 cases while total cases for its Debt Management Progamme reached 188, 318 cases.
“We truly hope to provide assistance to individuals who have financial problems paying their debts to banks or loans,” she added to The Borneo Post.
“We sort of act as the middlemen between borrowers and lenders, ensuring that borrowers manage their finances wisely and pudently in the process.”
Other services provided by AKPK include financial education whereby AKPK is open to giving talks to the public on ways to manage finances wisely.
“We have various modules targetted at different audiences,such as tertiary module for college students, entry level workforce module, modules for starting and raising a family,” she added.
AKPK also provides pre-retirees with a planning module which complements the retirement advisory services by the EPF.
Meanwhile, AKPK also provides financial counselling whereby the agency provides advice on managing finances one-on-one.
“AKPK can advise and even liaise for enrolment in Debt Management Programme where we assist individuals to help pay back at lower interest ratres and lower interest payments.
“They can lower that interest rate – depending on their income – and can convert that credit card loan into a more manageable term loan with a fixed monthly repayment.”
Marlene highlighted that those declared as bankrupt cannot enrol for the Debt Management Programme as a positive net disposable income is needed.
“Long term loans such as housing loans – we can help propose to your banks to reschedule your loans,” she said, adding that AKPK has collaborations with several banks to assist borrowers to assist their loans with lower interest rates.
All these services provided by AKPK are free of charge, she added, welcoming interested members to visit AKPK’s Sarawak office at Level 1, Bank Negara Jalan Satok. For outstation customers, AKPK makes monthly trips to Sibu, Bintulu and Miri.
AKPK outlined that they do not appoint any third party agents to represent AKPK for its services.