DianaTan.net

Public-listed companies will be required to provide an e-dividend payment system to shareholders by the third quarter of next year. Investors will be given a one-year grace period to provide their bank account number to Bursa Malaysia Depository to enable the dividend payments to be credited directly into their bank accounts. It plans to undertake a series of investors’ awareness programmes to familiarise investors with the benefits of e-dividends.

Stockbroking companies, meanwhile, will by mid-2010 be required to provide e-share payment options for clients to receive and make payments on their share transactions. This way, payments will be credited into bank accounts more quickly and efficiently compared with cheques.

The e-dividends and e-share payment are an intergral part of the initiative to move towards a paperless environment and promote usage of electronic payments in the capital market. These new measures were recently announced by our Prime Minister in the 2010 Budget.

With the paperless share transaction to be put in place next year, I guess those who are IT savvy may start to invest in the stock market and I hope there will be a convenient way to check the share movement online real time. You can also invest online through Public Bank and Maybank internet banking of the banks’ shares from their individual web sites. I have yet to try out this method as I only go for safe money instruments like Fixed Deposits and Government Bonds. But if you have excess money to invest and put away for a few years, then you might consider the above methods to invest online. What do you think?