Since the 2008 global financial crisis, many innovations have emerged in the financial sector as investors started to look for alternative methods to eliminate irrational decision-making in wealth management, and Robo-advisors is among those. Nine years after the first launching of Robo-advisors in the U.S. in 2008, the Securities Commission Malaysia has been issuing licenses to seven Robo-advisor platforms. The current COVID-19 outbreak has made this industry more in demand, increasing 763% in registration in 2020. However, much skepticism about Robo advisors’ ability and reliability in providing a similar quality or better advisory service compared to human-financial advisors. Therefore, this study examines the factors influencing the acceptance of Robo-advisors in wealth management in Malaysia. Adopting some factors from various established technology acceptance models, an online survey with 122 respondents was conducted using convenience sampling. Findings show that Relative Advantage, Effort Expectancy, and Social Influence significantly positive influence the Malaysian Behavioral Intention to Accept Robo-Advisors. On the contrary, there is no significant relationship between Perceived Risk and Malaysian Behavioral Intention to Accept Robo-Advisors. The study provides a positive insight into factors influencing the acceptance of Robo-Advisors in Malaysia.

The stress of environmental regulations, sustainable development objectives, and global warming is becoming more prominent now. Most studies conclude that the industrial sector is largely at fault and under tremendous pressure to address these climate change issues. This study highlights the significance of green innovation to Chinese firms in mitigating these conservational challenges, and the study probes the association between green innovation and absorptive capacity. Additionally, board capital (the social and human capital of directors) and environmental regulation—both drivers of green innovation—are explored as moderators between green innovation and absorptive capacity. With appropriate econometric methods and theoretical support from the natural resource-based review, the resource dependency theory, and the Porter hypothesis, the results indicate the positive relationship between green innovation and absorptive capacity. They also reveal board capital and environmental regulation as positive moderators, emphasizing their significance to green innovation. This study offers several suggestions and directives for stakeholders, such as businesses, policymakers, and governments, to foster green innovation for greater profitability, minimizing negative industrial consequences.

Mobile banking has the benefits of internet banking, in which the customer can access bank services over an internet connection anytime and anywhere. Millennials in Malaysia’s business environment are an enormous segment of the Malaysian population, and they are moving to take their places in the middle and high levels of their companies’ managerial governance pyramid these days and in the near future. This study examines the question, “What are the main factors that may influence mobile banking use (MBU) and the intention to use mobile banking (IU) among millenial consumers in Malaysia?”. The determining factors of UTAUT, performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), facilitating conditions (FC), hedonic motivation (HM), price value (PV), habit (Ha), perceived risk (PDR), and interface design quality (IDQ) were tested in this study. Method: SPSS and PLS-SEM are employed on a collected sample of 504 respondents of Millennials in Malaysia using a well-defined questionnaire to carry out all statistical analyses of this study. Result: The study model can explain 55.3% of the variance of mobile banking use (MBU) and 60.3% of the intention to use mobile banking (IU). In this study, all the relations of the model are significant, except the relation between price value (PV) and the intention to use mobile banking. For both IU and MBU in the model, the factor “Interface design quality” (IDQ) has the highest impact. In contrast, the factor “Perceived Risk” (PDR) has the lowest impact. The findings of this study extend the knowledge on mobile banking as an approach of financial technology implementation, from which mobile banking providers and interface designers can provide new potential solutions to expand the usage of mobile banking services in Malaysia. This study proposed a modified model with eleven variables. While the designed model was evaluated successfully and explained 55% of actual use and 60% of intentional use, the remaining portion (45% for actual use and 40% for intended usage) exposes yet other factors that are still unrevealed. Therefore, further studies are required to assess the design in various other financial sectors, and further studies are invited to conduct qualitative research to reveal other variables for a better understanding of the intention and actual use of mobile banking.

The purpose of this paper is to understand restaurant operators’ perception towards key areas of green practices that could be adopted in the future operations of the restaurant business in Malaysia. The paper used a qualitative approach through face-to-face interviews. Five restaurant operators who operated their independently owned casual upscale restaurants in the Klang Valley were selected as the respondents for the interviews. Eight areas of green practices adapted from Hu et al. (2010) have been commented and proposed to be served as a guideline to design the Environmental Management System (EMS) for restaurants to go green in Malaysia. Although the feedback given on the feasibility of implementing these green practices provided by the restaurant operators were generally positive, challenges lies ahead in getting them to adopt these green practices. It required understanding of the difficulties and motivations of implementing these practices. An in-depth understanding from the voices of restaurant operators was essential for further policy formulation and implementation in fostering the green practices which in turn can serve as a “win-win” situation for all parties. There seems to be a dearth of studies conducted on the perceptions of restaurant operators about the feasibility of green practices adoption in the operation of the restaurants in Malaysia. The implementation of EMS or the adoption of green practices was a vital missing-link among the restaurants. The outcome of this paper was expected to provide new ideas and knowledge on the areas of green practices to be adopted as the environmental guidelines to operate restaurants in Malaysia.

Financial complexity stems from a lack of financial literacy, excessive spending on unneeded products or impulse purchases, and sustaining an extravagant lifestyle, all of which have led to people resorting to loans to meet their requirements. Today, Malaysian young adults are indeed to be the main group of people who are currently enslaved by debt. Past studies mostly explored factors of personal saving behavior among Malaysian household and employees between 2011 and 2021. Studies conducted for young adults in the area of saving behavior are limited and not theory-driven, mainly focusing their level of financial literacy. To fill in this gap, this research aims to examine the saving behavior among Malaysian young adults. Using the Extended Theory of Planned Behavior (ETPB), this study attempts to investigate whether financial literacy (FL), family influence (FI), peer influence (PI), self-control (SC), and intention to save (ITS) have a substantial influence on university students’ saving behavior (SB) in Malaysia. Self-administered questionnaires are used to obtain primary data. 161 university students from both private and public higher learning institutions participated in the study. The study revealed that four independent variables (FL, FI, SC, and ITS) have a positive relationship with dependent variables (ASB). With FL having the biggest influence on ASB among the five. At the same time, PI are found to be insignificantly associated with ASB. This study gives important insights for Malaysian university students in terms of recognizing the relevance of financial literacy, family influence, self-control, and intention to save on saving behavior. .

Background - With the recent evolution of Financial Technology (FinTech), 11 peers to peer (P2P) lending platforms have been regulated by the Securities Commission in Malaysia since 2016. P2P lending platforms offer new investment opportunities to individual investors to earn higher rates on return than what traditional lenders usually provide. However, individual investors may face higher potential risks of default from their borrowers. Therefore, individual investors need to understand the potential exposure to such P2P lending platforms to make an effective investment decision. This study aims to explore the potential risk exposures that individual investors may experience at Malaysia's licensed P2P lending platforms. Methods - Based on data collected manually from nine P2P lending platforms over five months, relationships between interest rates and various risk classifying factors such as credit rating, industry, business stage, loan purpose, and loan duration are examined. Results- This study shows that loans with a similar credit rating and with or without similar loan purpose; and a business stage may offer investors significantly different interest rates. In addition, loans with shorter durations may provide investors with higher interest rates than those with longer durations. Finally, loans issued by companies from the same industry appeared to be charged with similar interest. These findings are valuable to investors to prepare themselves before making their investments at the P2P lending platforms. Conclusion- With first hand-collected data, this study provides an original insight into Malaysia's current P2P lending platforms. Findings obtained for relationships between interest rates and risk classifying factors such as credit rating, industry, business stage, loan purpose and loan duration are valuable to investors of Malaysian P2P lending platforms.