Invest with caution. Invest with extreme caution.

For those who are happened to miss this.

...it was too risky for an ordinary worker to decide on the type of investment

PETALING JAYA, May 12 (Bernama) -- Invest with extreme caution.

This is the impassioned plea from the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) to Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contributors intending to invest in unit trust funds.

A wrong decision could wipe out their investments in such unit trust companies, despite approval by the EPF Board, said MTUC general secretary G. Rajasegaran.

He said the MTUC had received many complaints pertaining to workers not benefitting from their investments, with some even losing their investments due to price fluctuation.

Rajasegaran was commenting on the increase in the number of withdrawals by members to invest in unit trust fund companies.

He said the EPF should provide special consultancy services to members who wished to invest in unit trusts.

"In the absence of such expert advice, it was too risky for an ordinary worker to decide on the type of investment," he told Bernama in an interview Wednesday.

Rajasegaran said, while MTUC appreciated the board's move to provide opportunities for EPF members to invest their savings for better returns, he felt this should be done very cautiously as the majority of the members were ignorant about the risks involved in such investments.

So far, the board has approved 16 unit trust fund companies. Another 25 would be appointed later.

According to Federation of Investment Managers Malaysia president Tunku Yaacob Tunku Abdullah, the number of EPF contributors investing in unit trust funds in 2007 was around 300,000.

The figure is expected to increase to a million by 2015.

(Source : Bernama)