We are only liable for max RM250 after credit card lost or stolen

Do you know that pursuant to Sections 19 and 26 of the Banking and Financial Institutions Act 1989, Bank Negara (Central Bank of Malaysia) has issued a Credit Card Guidelines in March 2003 to all credit card issuers. The Guidelines were intended to promote active consumerism and consumers’ understanding of credit card usage and protecting their interest as card users.

Any party who fails to comply with the guidelines may be found guilty of an offense punishable under Section 104 of the Act.

Here is what inside the guidelines say:

• Clause 13.2: "the cardholder's maximum liability for unauthorised transactions as a consequence of a lost or stolen credit card shall be confined to a limit specified by the issuer of the credit card, which shall not exceed RM250, provided the cardholder has not acted fraudently or has not failed to inform the issuer of the credit card as soon as is reasonably practicable, after having found that his credit card is lost or stolen."
• Clause 13.3: "where the amount imposed on the cardholder for unauthorised transactions due to loss or theft of the credit card is in excess of the maximum liability limit, the issuer has to prove that the cardholder has acted fraudently or failed to inform it as soon as reasonably practicable of the loss."
• Clause 13.4: "the issuer shall ensure that the cardholder is not held liable for any unauthorised transactions charged to the credit card after he/she has notified the issuer verbally or in writing. The issuer shall take imediate action upon notification by the cardholder to prevent further use of the lost of stolen credit card."

In layman terms, it means that if your credit card is lost or stolen, and you informed the bank immediately, the bank has to suspend your credit card at once. You are only liable to a maximum of RM250 caused by unauthorised use of credit card after you found out your card was lost/stolen and before you report it to your bank. If the bank wants to charge for more than that, they need to prove that you were negligent in handling your credit card and/or didn't report the lost/stolen immediately. Once you've made the report to the bank, either by phone or by fax or any other means, you are no longer liable for any amount charged to your credit card thereafter.

You should remember this information to protect your rights and benefits, just in case (touch wood!) anything bad happened to your credit cards.

Malaysian household monthly income distribution

The pie chart below indicates the Malaysian household monthly income distribution. The information is sourced from MP Amirsham’s reply to Dr Michael J Devaraj's question during a parliament assembly in July 2008 recently.



The root source and period of the statistics is not provided, and the number of households surveyed is also not available. It is believed that this information should be not before 2004 and not later than 2007.

Which group do you stand in the pie?

If the same piece of information is represented by bars, it will now look like this:




And according to another survey done by the Statistic Department for the Economic Planning Unit recently, the Malaysian average monthly household income is RM3686, which falls in the RM3-4k group.

57.8% of the families are below this group, and 29.3% are above it. This shows that the families fall on the average is actually have a higher position than the median in the distribution, as the median falls in the RM2-3k group.

This mean majority of the households are at the poorer side of the income group, forming a triangular distribution graph (if you break up the RM5-10k bar into intervals of RM1k as in other bars, you should see the triangle clearly), but the income of the richer side is so much that it is still able to pull up the average income figure.

Now, can you sense the "M"?

EIU published IT competitiveness benchmarking report 2008

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, a leading research and advisory firm under The Economist Group that publishes various famous business publications such as The Economist, CFO, etc.) has just published a white paper namely "How technology sectors grow: Benchmarking IT industrycompetitiveness 2008" sponsored by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

To produce the report, they have performed in-depth studies and ranked 66 countries based on the following 6 categories with a number of indicators in each of them:

1. Business environment for the IT industry
2. IT infrastructure
3. Human capital
4. Legal environment
5. R&D environment
6. Government support for IT industry development

Compared with the same studies done last year, here are some of their findings:

• Taiwan has risen from 6th to 2nd in the overall index based primarily on its strong performance in the R&D environment category, and particularly in patents.


• Japan has suffered the steepest dropamong the index countries—from 2nd to12th—also largely due to changes in its R&Dand patents scores.


• South Korea also fell from 3rd to 8th affected by patents scores.


• Canada has risen from 9th to 6th placethanks mainly to improved performance inthe area of human capital development.


• Israel has advanced from 20th to 16ththis year thanks to stronger scores in IT infrastructure and in the area of governmentsupport for the IT industry.


• Germany has fallen from 16th to 19th place due primarily to the change in measuring patents, as well as toslower growth of R&D funding.

Three Asian economies have made it to the Top 10. They are Taiwan (no. 2, just trailing the champion US), South Korea (no. 8) and Singapore (no. 9). Malaysia ranked no. 36 overall (same position as in 2007), and ranked no.8 among the 17 economies in the Asia-Pacific region.


(Click image to enlarge...)

Click here to read the full report of "How technology sectors grow: Benchmarking IT industrycompetitiveness 2008".