KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 13): Half a million Malaysians have fallen victim to scams since early last year, signifying a worrying lack of financial literacy among the people, says Securities Commission Malaysia (SC).

It is therefore critical for investors to take the necessary precautionary measures to prevent falling victim to malicious schemes, said SC chairman Tan Sri Ranjit Ajit Singh.

"Investor education plays a key role in our mandate of ensuring adequate investor protection," he said in his welcoming remarks at the InvestSmart Fest 2017.

Ranjit said that since the launch of InvestSmart three years ago, SC has been focusing on financial and investment literacy, with the specific target being the younger generation.

"In this regard, SC investor education initiatives for developing financial and investment literacy extends to school children, college and university students aligned with the government's vision of developing our next generation of investors," he said, adding that improving this issue requires long-term behavioural change across all segments of society.

For that, SC has set up a behavioural analysis unit within its Consumer & Investor Office since it was noted that the aspects of behaviour places a great deal in terms of influencing investor participation in their investments and hence, making investment decisions that might not be optimal for their own benefits.

InvestSmart Fest 2017 was launched by Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. In his speech, Khairy spoke on the growing concern over the high bankruptcy rate among young people.

He said the previous extremely punitive effect of being a bankrupt has pushed youths away from investing.

"27% of all bankruptcy cases from 2013 until September last year are Malaysians between the ages of 25-34, making it 22,581 cases in total," he added, noting that the Insolvency Act 1967 has been amended to make it easier to discharge people who have been declared bankrupt.

Khairy also said that by 2035, Malaysia will be an ageing population where there will be more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 15 for the first time in the history of the country.

"With an ageing population and longer life expectancy, we have the unique problem of thinking about how to fund retirement, or even how to imagine retirement in the future, or even maybe for us to make retirement obsolete altogether," he said.