Interest in digital investments taking off despite rise in online scams
KUALA LUMPUR: Younger Malaysians make up more than half of investors entering the capital market, even as the shift towards digital investing exposes them to an online landscape increasingly exploited by scammers.
Bursa Malaysia’s Group Commercial and Market Coverage director Stephanie Tan Kar Mun said about 60% of new Central Depository System (CDS) accounts are being opened by investors aged 35 and below.
According to Bursa, new CDS account openings rose from 477,000 in 2024 to 522,000 last year, with another 337,000 opened in the first half of this year alone.
Tan said the investor landscape is becoming “more digital, younger and increasingly self-directed”.
“If you look at our retail trades, around 80% of retail trades now are actually executed online.
“This was versus an average of 60% pre-Covid-19 pandemic period,” she said.
This growth is also being seen beyond the country’s traditional investor markets as the country’s Capital Master Plan aspires to create a more inclusive capital market for all Malaysians.
Bursa said retail CDS account openings between 2024 and 2025 grew by 89.7% in Sabah, 61.9% in Sarawak and 48.5% in Terengganu, following targeted investor outreach efforts.
However, greater digital access to investment opportunities has been accompanied by greater exposure to potentially unreliable information and scams.
Tan said investors now receive information almost instantaneously through channels including social media, financial influencers and AI-enabled tools.
“I think that greater access is a positive (sign), but I think it also makes it important for investors to actually verify the information,” she added.
The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) said investment scams it encounters are perpetrated “almost exclusively online”.
SC’s Investor Protection and Literacy general manager Jawahar Ali Ameer Ali said around 36% are “clone scams”.
“How the scam operates is that they impersonate a legitimate entity. They will forge and misuse the logos of other entities or even use images of prominent personalities to perpetrate the scam,” he said.
Even the SC’s own name and logo have been misused in such scams, with 21% of scams involving this tactic.
Other methods to lure investors include fake social media advertisements, private WhatsApp grooming and APK files sent directly to their targets, he added.
