Areca Challenge to promote financial literacy

PETALING JAYA: Fund management company Areca Capital Sdn Bhd has launched its inaugural Areca Challenge 2018, which aims to promote financial literacy from the grassroots level targeting Gen Y while serving to boost the graduates’ employability.
The challenge will be a continuous corporate social responsibility initiative that help to address the common issues of lacking financial literacy, aging population and employability of graduates in Malaysia.
This challenge has attracted registration of 118 students mainly from accounting, finance, and economics covering 11 tertiary institutions. All of the 29 participating teams were given a case study question to test their knowledge on coming out proposal for a hypothetical client on investment and trust planning.
Students will go through qualifying round where they will be evaluated based on written
proposal and the top five teams will be selected to proceed to the final round to be held on July 31 for proposal presentation in front of panel of judges formed by industry practitioners.
A sum of RM6,000 cash prizes and 13,000 fund units will be awarded to the winning teams. On top of the prizes, the challenge also offers attractive opportunity to students on paving their way to financial industry via apprenticeship and scholarship for Certified Financial Planner certification program.
“This challenge will help to spur students to take the first step towards making a difference. We aim to equip them with valuable financial planning skills and appropriate mindset which can be a treasure for their life journey. Their unique learning experience from the challenge will also help to prepare them to be industry-ready upon graduation for seamless transition into the financial industry,” said Danny Wong, CEO of Areca Capital.
The challenge is a collaboration between Areca Capital, Inter-Pacific Asset
Management Sdn Bhd and RHB Trustees Bhd. Federation of Investment Managers
Malaysia and Financial Planning Association of Malaysia also played their
role as the supporting organisations via various collaborations to elevate the public awareness on the importance of financial literacy.