What participants have said about the programmes
The accounts below come from people who have completed one or more of the Hikmah Bayu programmes. They speak in their own terms about what changed and what did not.
Back to HomepageIn their own words
"I signed up for the documents course because I had a drawer full of statements I never opened. By the fourth week I was actually reading my EPF statement properly and understood what the numbers meant. It was not what I expected — it was quieter, more focused. I did not feel rushed."
"The pre-retirement programme was a significant commitment over five months, but I found the private session format right for me. My situation is a bit complicated — multiple savings accounts, an older policy from the 1990s — and there was time in each session to work through my actual circumstances rather than a generic scenario. The written closing summary was particularly useful."
"My wife and I did the Orientation together. The three-week structure worked well — each week built on the previous one, and the writing exercise between sessions helped us talk about what came up. The group was small enough that questions were properly answered, not just noted and moved past."
"I was apprehensive about the documents course because I have always found financial paperwork intimidating. After six weeks, not everything is clear, but the main things — how to read my EPF statement, what the key items on my unit trust statement mean — those are now ordinary to me. That alone was worth it."
"I attended the Orientation after reading about it through a friend. I came expecting something like a sales presentation — it was nothing like that. Just a facilitator, six of us, and three weeks of working through the actual shape of our finances. No product recommendations, which I appreciated."
"Seven years from a target retirement date, the pre-retirement programme helped me organise something I had been avoiding. The session on healthcare provisioning was the most useful for me personally — it is the part I had least thought about and most needed to. The pace was appropriate. Nothing felt rushed or unnecessarily alarming."
A closer look at three participant journeys
These accounts are written with participant permission and focus on what changed during and after the programme.
Ramlah had been employed for 27 years and had accumulated EPF savings, a Takaful policy from 2001, and several years of unit trust statements — none of which she had read carefully. She found the language of the documents opaque and had been leaving them unopened.
The documents course took each instrument in turn. By week three — EPF statements — Ramlah had identified that her Account 2 balance was larger than she had believed. By week five, working through the insurance policy schedule, she noted a coverage gap she had not been aware of.
Ramlah followed up with her insurance agent about the gap and requested an updated policy schedule. She described the course as having given her "the vocabulary to ask the right questions" — not the answers themselves, but the ability to have the conversations she had been deferring.
With retirement approximately six years away, Chong had a reasonable overall picture of his finances but had not worked through the likely sequence of his retirement withdrawals or thought carefully about healthcare provisioning in his 70s and 80s.
Monthly sessions over five months worked through EPF strategy, his existing private retirement scheme account, insurance adequacy and healthcare cost planning. The midway review identified that his insurance coverage was likely adequate but his medical rider terms had changed in 2021 without his full awareness.
The written closing summary provided a clear record of the considerations covered and the questions that remained open. Chong described it as "the first time I've had a document about my own financial situation that I actually wrote myself, in a sense — because all the questions came from me."
Ahmad and Fatimah had been meaning to review their finances together for some time but had not found a way to begin the conversation. Neither had a financial background and they were uncertain what the review should even cover.
The three-week Orientation gave structure to the review: cash flow in week one, holdings in week two, commitments and recurring questions in week three. The between-session writing exercise prompted several conversations at home that Ahmad described as "the ones we had been putting off."
Both enrolled in the documents course the following month. The Orientation had identified several documents — primarily unit trust statements — that neither had been reading properly, and they wanted to understand them before making any further decisions.
Contact details
32 Lebuh Cintra
10100 George Town, Penang
Mon–Fri: 9am–5:30pm
Sat: 9am–1pm
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