Companies join forces for series of financial roadshows
CTOS Data Systems and SBH Corporate Group have signed a deal to promote a series of financial wellbeing roadshows across Malaysia.
The tie-up will see SBH Financial Consultancy join the growing number of CTOS partners that promote various financial education programmes. On top of that, SBH Financial Consultancy will now be able to offer their clients CTOS Score reports and CTOS SecureID, to ascertain their credit health and safeguard them from fraud and scams.
At the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two, CTOS Data Systems CEO Eric Chin said: “Our mission is to help empower individuals and businesses to get access to credit, enabling them to have a better future. A large part of this is to help inform and educate the public as to the resources available to them.”
In recent years, CTOS has carried out many consumer-related financial literacy programmes in order to raise public awareness on the importance of credit health. This includes more than 400 financial education roadshows and webinars across the country in partnership with Bank Negara Malaysia, the Ministry of Finance, Employee Provident Fund and Agensi Kaunseling dan Pengurusan Kredit, plus various government agencies, banks and property developers.
Sam Tsen, CEO and Founder of SBH Financial Consultancy, commented: “SBH’s mission is to improve the financial literacy of all Malaysians. We regularly give out free consultations and organise workshops and seminars for both individuals and companies, especially SMEs, to provide them with professional advice in managing their finances.
CTOS recently held its biggest networking event, which saw more than 1,000 businesses attend its ‘SME Biz Day 2023’ in Bangsar South.
The event was designed to provide a forum for SMEs to network and to gain important insights from leaders in their sectors.
“We have been assisting SMEs for over 30 years through the CTOS Credit Manager solution, which enables businesses to evaluate potential clients, automated monitoring of existing customers, and reinforces timely payment performance. Today, our product offering has grown beyond the traditional credit reporting instruments to now include a breadth of digital solutions, all carefully curated to support every stage of the consumer lifecycle,” said CTOS Digital Group CEO Erick Hamburger.
“With more than 20,000 SME subscribers and growing, the CTOS SME Biz Day is aimed to help businesses with networking opportunities and to equip them with these latest digital solutions to catalyse business growth,” he said.
CTOS announced its upcoming release of CM Lite, a simplified version of CTOS Credit Manager. It has a mobile-friendly version that allows users to buy reports and view monitoring alerts at a glance, along with other vital CTOS Credit Manager functions.
Tourists beginning to return
Following the reopening of borders and the resumption of international travel in 2022, visitor arrivals to ASEAN increased in the last few months of 2022.
Malaysia has outperformed its ASEAN counterparts, with tourist arrivals as of December 2022 recovering to 92% of December 2019 levels, driven by visitors from Singapore, said Standard Chartered in its latest Global Research Report.
Across Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam (ASEAN-6 excluding Malaysia), total visitor arrivals have recovered to 60% of 2019 levels on average.
Excluding tourists from China and Hong Kong, tourist arrivals from ASEAN-6 (excluding Malaysia) have recovered to 75% of 2019 levels. The slower recovery in arrivals from China and Hong Kong is due to their more stringent Covid lockdown rules.
“We estimate that arrivals are only back to 18.4% of pre-pandemic levels,” said Standard Chartered.
The company’s report said it expected Thailand to record the largest improvement in its travel balance this year, followed by Malaysia.
In 2022, Thailand’s travel balance improved to 0.8% of GDP from 0.1% in 2021, still far short of the 2017-19 average of 8.6% of GDP. Malaysia’s travel balance improved to -0.1% of GDP in 2022 from -0.9% in 2021, but was still below the 2017 to 2019 average of 2.2% of GDP, according to Standard Chartered.
