KOTA SAMARAHAN: The Securities Industry Development Corporation (SIDC) aims to raise awareness amongst the nation’s younger generation on the significance of having good financial and investment ‘literacy’.
Azril Bahaman
As the training and education arm of the Securities Commission of Malaysia, the body targets a public participation total of 50,000 people for its various programmes every year.
“It is one of our internal KPIs (key performance indexes),” SIDC’s assistant manager for investor education, Azril Bahaman told The Borneo Post at the sidelines of an investment seminar for undergraduates held at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) here recently.
“Especially for youngsters, we are eyeing participation of 20,000 students from primary level for our ‘Kids N Cash’ programme, and another 20,000 from secondary level for our ‘Teens N Cash Programme.
“For tertiary level namely our ‘Cash@Campus’ programme, we are seeing a total of 2,000 students per year, both from public and private universities. As these youngsters are the future caretakers of our country, it is vital to equip them with smart investment knowledge towards driving Malaysia to become a highly developed economy by the year 2020.”
Additionally, Azril pointed out that responses for SIDC’s public education had become more encouraging over the years.
“ This is bolstered further by the approval support from the Ministry of Education as well as endorsement from Bank Negara Malaysia. Of course, the mass media has also been instrumental towards the development of our programmes.
“In measuring the effectiveness level of the programme, we conduct survey three months after each programme has been delivered. For the school programme, we have seen that 99 per cent students have started or increase their savings thus far; for our public programmes slated for adults, we have recorded 80 to 100 per cent effectiveness level.
“These results show that people in general have started to embrace the good practice of savings, notably in changing their mindset on the way they manage and grow their money,” he stressed.
To note, SIDC’s financial planning and education programme was first incepted in 2007, with a funding from the Capital Market Development Fund (CMDF).
“For these public programmes, we receive annual allocations from CMDF worth RM4 million, while another RM5 million is set aside for our corporate programmes. The funding has been set up for a five-year a period between 2008 and 2013, by which a new grant will be allocated after the period has expired,” explained Azril.
Apart from being student-oriented, Azril also highlighted some other public investment education programmes conducted by SIDC.
“Our event here in Unimas is only one of many ongoing programmes SIDC has set up for this year. After this, we will be going for our school programme in Kuantan before proceeding to the ‘Felda’ areas in Negri Sembilan for our ‘Be Money Wise’ (BMW) programme.
“From there, we will be come to Penang for four financial management programmes, including a special BMW programme designed for parents on how to manage their children’s education needs.”
For Sarawak especially, Azril revealed that the state had proven to be a very ‘fertile’ ground in disseminating SIDC’s message on the importance of financial planning and smart investing practices.
“There will be more programmes incoming especially for Sarawak, as it is the one state that has regularly recorded very encouraging turnout and participation every time we conduct our events here, even in those rural areas,” he enthused.
“We will return to Kuching this November 8 to 11 to conduct programmes at several schools and institutes of higher learning here within the city. Another trip will be on this December 11, where we will be conducting our BMW seminar for parents at the Pullman Hotel from 9am to 1pm, where admission will be free of charge.”
Notably, SIDC would also be holding a special programme called ‘Train the Trainers’ in partnership with the Sarawak Foundation.
According to Azril, Train the Trainer would be a special programme where the SIDC would provide comprehensive training for retired teachers on financial literacy amongst the public.
“Since SIDC is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, these retired teachers will become our ‘agents’ in disseminating our message on the importance of good savings and financial management habits to the public here,” he said.
For more information and exciting features SIDC’s programmes, Azril urged the public to visit SIDC Malaysian Investors’ website at www.min.com.my where it would also be linked on SIDC’s corporate website at www.sidc.com.mywww.sidc.com.my.