AKPK aims to raise financial literacy awareness among young adults

KUALA LUMPUR: Debt Management and Counselling Agency (AKPK) aims to raise financial literacy awareness, particularly among young adults, to prevent them from falling into debts.

Its operations division general manager, Nor Fazleen Zakaria, told Bernama, the interests among the public were there.

“However, for each financial product, there are different elements that AKPK, an agency that helps counsel the public for free, needs to brief the consumers, for instance, in the areas of hire purchase, credit card usage and others.

“For hire purchase, the interest is at a flat rate which spreads (for instance) over nine years, and is quite expensive. After five years, it is typical of Malaysians to want to change to a better car.

“However, the value of the car depreciates tremendously after five years and by then your outstanding balance with the bank would still be a lot,” she said.

Nor Fazleen said if a consumer did not know his rights, he might be caught in debt problems.

“Similarly with credit card. What we like to educate is that it is fine to have a few (credit cards) but not too many, (and we) should pay full five per cent (charges) if possible because the interest on interest is extremely high at 18 per cent, and if you don’t manage, it is going to double up and accumulate,” she said.

Nor Fazleen said Malaysians needed to be aware that AKPK assisted and counselled consumers for free.

“Our counsellors provide advices. However, there are nonAKPK staff that claimed they’re our agents. It is a scam.

“The non-AKPK personnel claims that they can give lower interest rate and would swipe your credit card and take a fee from it (advisory charge). There is a need for awareness because some Malaysians want (the easy way out) and not trouble themselves by trusting a third party ‘agent’,” said Nor Fazleen, adding that those who sought help only needed to call, visit AKPK’s office or access AKPK portal.

AKPK has resolved 14,973 cases involving RM600.6 million between 2006 and Oct 31, 2017 and had counselled over 648,295 cases with the participation of 203,079 individuals in its Debt Management Programme to help them regain control of their finances. — Bernama