Investment behaviour and the perception of Sarawak Bumiputera in Bintulu, Sarawak towards Unit Trust Scheme.

Unit trust, or rather called as mutual fund in present day, was first introduced in pre-existing Malaya in 1959 by British investors. Malaysian government introduced PNB, a government subsidised unit trust scheme, in 1978 to encourage the Bumiputera group to save money and make investment. This is later followed by the emergence of private investment companies the following decades. Unit trust is a collective investment scheme where the investors’ money are pooled together in a specific fund and then managed by full-time professionals and fund managers. However, despite government and private sectors effort in reaching the targeted group, there is still lack of investment made by the Bumiputera, let alone the Sarawak Bumiputera (specifically referring to Dayak and Orang Ulu group in this research. This study attempts to investigate the extent of investment made by Sarawak Bumiputera while examining which among four factors influencing the behaviour the most; which are trust towards unit trust scheme, knowledge about unit trust scheme, financial attitude, and internet influence. A research framework from literature review is developed and then followed by quantitative method of research where questionnaire is constructed and distributed to target population. A total of 132 responds collected but only 120 responds are usable after data cleaning. The responds are analysed with a number of analysis namely normality of data distribution, reliability analysis, descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, and regression analysis. The findings verifies that lack of investment made by Sarawak Bumiputera is still significant while the most influencing factor is financial attitude. Therefore, the government, investment companies, and any related parties should put more efforts to encourage and educate Sarawak Bumiputera to manage their financial wisely so that they are able to keep extra cash for investment.