[EN] The Challenges of Islamic Unit Trust Sales in Malaysia: A Review of Unit Trust Consultant

Abstract

Unit trust investment is a popular financial instrument among the community in Malaysia. In fact, the addition of Islamic funds in the unit trust industry provides a great competition and proves that the Islamic fund is also able to compete and reap the consistent benefits of the consistent. Although the fund has gained some traction, it still lags behind the more established conventional funds in terms of popularity within the industry. The issue of shariah-compliant is not a critical issue as the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) has played a big role in tightening the issuance of new Islamic or shariah-compliant funds with a number of criteria to be adhered to and requires the appointment of a shariah advisor in each issued fund. Proposed improvements need to be made to enhance the understanding and accessibility of information to the community so that unit trust investments can be part of the interest of Malaysians to venture into it. Among the obvious situations in implementing the sale of Islamic unit trust funds to the community in Malaysia is by using sales agents or unit trust consultants accredited by the Federation of Investment Managers Malaysia (FIMM) agency. This concept paper is an investigation and evaluation of secondary data obtained from the unit trust industry and other qualitative assessments based on the challenges faced by unit trust industry players in Malaysia especially in marketing their products directly to the community.