My working experience in Malaysia

Its comes a time when one has to make a decision during one's holidays: to work or not to work. I have made that hard decision, and the answer is: to work. If you had not known yet, I have been working in Affin Investment Bank lately. I got in from a recommendation by Mr.Ong Lam Keong who is a friend of my dad's. He is a remisier in the firm and obviously has some influence in it, judging by the fact that I got in and he has been working there his whole life!

A little about the company I am working in, Affin Investment Bank. They have two main branches, Affin Securities and Affin Merchant Bank. The word Affin is just a name, I have no idea what it means. But I am working in Affin Securities. The hierarchy structure is as follows: Affin Investment Bank is held by Affin Capital Holdings Pty Ltd which is held by Affin Holdings Limited which is listed on the malaysian stock exchange. Affin Holdings also has Affin Bank and Affin Islamic Bank. A major shareholder of Affin Holdings is LTAT, which is the pension fund for army soldiers. That was a whole lot to take in, but I hope you get it, like I did, after only awhile of clear thinking.

My working experience in Affin has been nothing short of new. I have learnt so much in this first week of my job. They had taught me how to write cheques to specific clients, and sometimes add a charge to it if its banking to a bank with instructions to bank to another bank. They also taught me general ledger, where I had to insert narrations for some entries. I learn alot about corporate culture where the working environment for a company is very important for the success of the company. I am in the Finance & Accounting division of the business. Altogether there are about 20 divisions. They are pretty specialised but not yet as specialised as ING, an insurance company my friend Lesley worked at.

Another thing I learnt alot in the company is about costs. To put it in short, the company is divided into two, the profit centre and the cost centre. The profit centre is where the dealers, remisiers and managers meet clients to gain revenue for the company. The cost centre is where everything else is handled for them and to comply with all the regulations by the securities commission. While I was handling general ledger, I learn alot about claims and general stuff the company or its employees can indulge themselves in. Directors can get free memberships to clubs, they can go for entertainment and claim the cost back, in short, anything that can be traced to work can be claimed back. Of course, they also enjoy alot whilst at the same time spending zero of their money. All they have to do is keep the receipt as evidence, and fill in a claimants' form at the end of every month. The company will refund them.

I'm also given the task of filing payment vouchers, handling charges and claims by dealers and managers. I have learnt alot from that, even though it was just filing. I know which companies the business associates itself with, and also who the main and key employees are. I was also asked to do a simple analysis on financial accounts, and the costs incurred each month. I had to key in the data to an excel spreadsheet and then analyse the data month by month.

But the most extensive experience of all is on fixed assets. Together with Amer, a close colleague of mine, we did sorting of fixed assets, tracing of the assets to each department, checking of the originality of the assets, like where it came from. It must be supported by a purchase requisition, which is really a suggestion order to the purchasing department to purchase an asset. It is funny how Human Resources does the purchasing, employment of people and administration all in one department. Maybe we aren't specialised enough and need to be more. I also asset verification where I had to see if the asset has been written off or is still there.

Alongside all of that, I had also read through many Securities Commission rules including International Financial Reporting Standards. I just realised brokerages have alot of rules to comply with, the main being the capital adequacy ratio. They also have all kinds of risks like the position risk, counterparty risk, large exposure risk, outstanding risk, operational risk and all kinds of other risks. Each time, the organisation must have a high(or low) enough ratio of the risks every day. Amer is responsible for sending it reports to the Commission every single day to update them of our financial health. Learning about IFRS, I also learnt to implement them in real-life situations, not just textbook questions and university. I also learnt about the Anti Money Laundering Act and the Counter Financing of Terrorism Act. Each bank should have a compliance officer, in a compliance division, that checks for suspicious activities going on involving money laundering, which is, turning dirty money into clean money.

I think I have described most of what I have learnt in Affin in just one week! Believe it or not. Besides all of that, there is also the experience of going to work, spending money on parking, socialising with all kinds of people, having lunch at work and going home from work. That is tremendous experience. Actually I started work on Tuesday. So that makes it only four days! I wonder how my further 6 weeks will be. I know I have a few files waiting for me to read them on Monday, as well as been given more work next week since some staff are going on compulsory leave, so I will have a PC to use with internet connection!

If any of my dear readers are planning to do an internship, I urge you to go for it! It is an amazing experience, well, so far. But you also give up free time. So go for it, if you are ready. Cheers.