banking | Living in Malaysia

CIMB is one of Malaysia large and highly rated banks (several Malaysian banks have yet to fall prey to the level of problems those in Europe and the USA have). Investment banking is a very tricky area. There are huge unnecessary profits to banks such as Goldman Sachs taking from the current investment banking situation (which is just a lousy system that pours billions into a few banks for activities not worth close to what they take).

However the USA and European banks have often set up compensation structures that encourage bad risks, and bad pricing, and bad service to customers. If CIMB falls into that trap they almost certainly would fall to the same problems all other investment banks have fallen to – which required massive taxpayer funded bailouts.

Hopefully CIMB is not going into the gambling with huge leverage aspect of “investment banking” that most of the USA and European companies have made the main factor in their operations.

If CIMB just takes a simple approach to managing investment financing deals they can take huge profits and give customers huge savings off the current lousy deals they are offered by the current limited investment banking options. I would be worried though. The temptations to create huge cash incentives that will result in the company taking on huge risks and undermining customers have been impossible for most investment banks to avoid. If the investment bank is attached to a normal bank then you run into all sorts of risks of taxpayer funded bailouts.

Paying bills electronically isn’t as straight forward as it should be. For example, for my electricity bill I asked my real estate agent how to pay it and was told it could only be done online through 2 banks and suggesting I try my management office or paying in person. Well after a bit of investigation I found that one option to pay online was only available through 2 banks (but that options was closed down “to upgrade and better server our customers”). But another method to pay online is available through many banks.

Why real estate agents can’t even provide such basic information correctly is beyond me. I would expect such details as the very minimum to be expected of real estate agents serving expats. But sadly that seems to be the way it is.

I talked to my management office and they would take the payment but only bring the payments to the electric company every few weeks so they suggested paying at any post office (we don’t have many expats at this condo so their preference for paying in person instead of finding an internet solution is not that surprising). You can also mail the payments back (but I don’t have checks or stamps yet so that option doesn’t appeal to me).

If you want to pay online, go directly to your bank and go through the paying bills online section.

Another bill I have to pay directly is for my internet service. There is some option to pay online but you have to print out a form, complete it and mail it back in (this is just to make a payment). I am not sure why they don’t make it easier to pay online. Partially I am sure this is a preference of some people here to pay in person. Also I am sure it is because paying staff salaries is not a huge cash drain. In countries with higher staff salaries companies make it as easy as possible to pay online and avoid paying staff to just process payments made in person.

It looks like the best way to make payments is through your bank’s web site. Which is fine, now that I understand that is the way to do things.

Living in Malaysia

Tag Archives: banking

CIMB Takes Aggressive Investment Bank Actions

Paying Bills Electronically