Fundsupermart.com is finally in Malaysia

Last month I wrote about the coming trend of unit trust funds becoming available for trade online, to be offered by Tune Money and Fundsupermart. Fundsupermart from Singapore has finally become available.

I checked it out today but was rather disappointed. I have been waiting for this for a long time, only to find that they are selling funds currently offered by our local unit trust fund managers. I was hoping that they will bring in some foreign funds currently not available here but I don’t see them. I’m not sure if these will come later on.

The benefit of buying local funds from Fundsupermart is that you incur less sales charges, at 2% compared to the average of about 5% charged by the fund managers. Annual management fee remains the same as what is charged by the fund managers, as is expected.

How this works is that you first register for free for an account to trade. You can choose to sign up for an individual account or you can go for a beneficiary account which allows you to add up to 3 beneficiaries to your funds. These beneficiaries have no access to your trading and units unless something untoward happens to you.

You will be able to buy and sell units online, at the usual minimum purchase units and top-ups (RM1,000 and RM100 respectively). Payment for your purchase is currently only by cheque. I think they will only launch the online payment method at a later stage. Once your cheque has been received, Fundsupermart will proceed to buy into the funds you have selected. Note that the purchase is done upon receipt of your cheque, and not upon clearance of the cheque.

With stocks going cheap, it seems like a good time to buy into unit trusts now. If you are one who do not necessarily need an agent to service your unit trust trades, then Fundsupermart will be a good avenue for you to save some fees.

Check out Fundsupermart here.