The Story of Rates.my – The “New Year” Portfolio
It started with a simple goal for 2026: find the best fixed deposit rate in Malaysia for my cash reserves. But as I started digging, I realized something that gets a seasoned investor annoyed —the retail banking market in Malaysia is actually “quite tricky”
Generic comparison sites show you the standard rates, but they often ignore the “Branch-Only” specials or the tactical promotions that banks hide in fine print. I found myself spending hours filtering out “hidden costs” and fake “promotional” fluff.
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin
15 Years of Market Perspective
I didn’t start this as a web developer; I started this as a trader. For the last 15 years, I have lived and breathed the markets—navigating stocks, property, and digital assets.
When you spend over a decade looking for yield across diverse asset classes, you develop a “BS detector” for bad deals. I know that safe diversification is the foundation of wealth, but in Malaysia, “safe” money shouldn’t mean “lazy” money.
I built Rates.my because I wanted a tool that didn’t exist: A high-performance filter that hunts down the absolute best yields, regardless of whether they are advertised or “hidden” at a bank branch counter.
Why We Are Different: The “Retail First” Code
- Transparency Over Profit: Most sites are built to generate leads for banks. Rates.my was built for personal use first. If a rate is bad, we show it. If there is a “catch,” we highlight it in green.
- Branch-Specific Hunting: We go beyond the website. We track the offers that banks try to keep “offline” to ensure retail users aren’t left behind.
- Crowdsourced Truth: We are pioneering User Reviews for Malaysian banking. I want to know if a bank makes it easy to deposit but impossible to withdraw. Transparency comes from the community, not the brochure.
- No Hidden Agendas: I love finance, I love yield, and I love transparency
A Tool for Me, and the World
Rates.my began as my personal dashboard—a way for me to manage my own portfolio’s “safe” bucket. But the mission grew. I want every Malaysian saver to have the same data that the high-net-worth “insiders” have.
We are here to help diversify safely, earn the best yield, and see through the bs.
“Compounded interest is the eighth wonder of the world. “ — Albert Einstein