The term financial planning has gained a great deal of currency recently. The most important Malaysian development in this field in recent times was the August 14, 2000 launch of the Financial Planning Association of Malaysia (FPAM).

Judging from the hunger for information and guidance exhibited by regular Malaysians, financial planning is a process that people truly need help with. Consider this excerpt of an e-mail from Rose (not her real name) who is in her late 30s, divorced and the mother of three small children: "It is strange that I never really took a serious look at the world of financial planning, until now. I guess unpleasant situations had to arise to prompt me to look beyond myself and my ability to assess the kind of financial position I'll be in at the end of my working life. It's either going to a happy relaxed scenario or a frightening one."

The financial planning industry in Malaysia is approximately 20 years behind that of the U.S. But if the right nurturing environment is formed in Malaysia, then the domestic industry can leapfrog the usual stumbling advances and catch up with the developed world.

Serious industry issues abound, but in this roundtable forum, zoomFinance has chosen not to focus on those big hurdles facing the industry, but more on the plight of the man and woman on the streets of Taiping, Kuala Lumpur, Labuan, and a hundred other towns in Malaysia. Most of our questions today have been taken from queries made by the Malaysian rakyat, common people like Rose, who need sound guidance from professionals of the highest integrity and competence.

To answer these questions, zoomFinance has assembled a Grade A team of financial planning proponents who are involved in all three key areas of the financial planning process, namely

• wealth accumulation;
  
• wealth preservation; and
  
• wealth distribution.

MARK TOH CHIN HIAN [MT] (Apex Unit Trusts Bhd)
Mark Toh is an associate of the Chartered Institute of Insurance (UK) with a masters degree from Britain's University of Keele. He began his career with a multinational insurance company holding various positions until his promotion to the position of General Manager in a multinational insurance broking firm in 1990. In 1991, he was appointed by a local banking group to start up and manage a group of financial services companies that included unit trusts, asset management, trustee services and will writing. Over the last couple of years, he was the President Director on the board of an Indonesian stockbroking company as well as the principal consultant to an established global bank in the setting up of one of its sales teams in Singapore. He is a founder member of the Federation of Malaysian Unit Trust Managers (FMUTM) and is currently a council member chairing the equity and fixed income trust funds committee. Mark is also a member of the Certification and Standards Board of the newly formed Financial Planning Association of Malaysia (FPAM). Currently the managing director of Apex Unit Trusts Bhd, he brings along with him more than 20 years of both local and international experience in the financial services industry.

K P BOSE DASAN [BD] (ITF Management Sdn Bhd)
K P Bose Dasan is a chartered financial consultant (ChFC) and a tax adviser. He is the managing director of ITF Management Sdn Bhd, which specializes in individual tax and financial management. He is one of the pioneers in financial planning in Malaysia and has helped the Malaysian Insurance Institute to conduct the ChFC program successfully in Malaysia the last four years. He regularly contributes articles to local magazines and financial periodicals on the subject of financial planning and has been a speaker at many national forums and conferences on tax and financial planning. He holds an economics degree from University of Malaya and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Britain's Cranfield Institute of Technology. He has a personal mission to increase the standard of financial literacy in Malaysia.

KEVIN SWAMPILLAI [KS] (Standard Chartered Bank)
Kevin Swampillai is currently the Senior Product Manager (Liabilities & Fee-based Products) of Standard Chartered Bank. He has over 10 years of experience in marketing financial services encapsulating brand management, product management, database marketing as well as business and product development. He is also a quantitative marketing practitioner with P&L accountability for a deposit and fee-based product range. Prior to Standard Chartered Bank, Kevin was the senior officer of marketing and product development at Arab-Malaysian Finance Bhd. For his excellence in product development, Kevin has won several international awards. Among them: the 1999 Asian Banking Awards (New Business Venture Category - Higher Education Fund) and the 1999 Washington Advisory Board's Council on Financial Competition (World's Most Innovative Products - Higher Education Fund). He holds an honours Bachelor of Arts degree in accounting from Britain's University of Kent.

MODERATOR:
RAJEN DEVADASON [RD] (RD Book Projects)
Rajen Devadason is an award-winning journalist. As staff writer, of Malaysian Business magazine, he won the Malaysian Press Institute's award for best economic journalism in 1992 and the Citibank Pan-Asia business journalism award, which included a stint at New York's Columbia University and visits to the White House, World Bank and the US Federal Reserve. His first book "Your A-Z Guide to the Stock Market" was published in 1997 and since then he has seen a new book out each year. Rajen holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Physics and Computing from King's College, University of London, and is a member of MENSA UK. He currently writes two distinct financial planning columns - a print column for Malaysian Business magazine and an online one for zoomFinance - and is overworked as a financial planning trainer-cum-consultant.