Personally, I think 5.5% front end sales charge is very high. Must I go through an agent as well where I have to pay further commission on top of the sales charge for every transaction?

You should be more afraid of investing through an agent as you add on another risk factor.

One can never be too sure as the agent will have his/her own interests as well. I'd rather eliminate that risk and invest using my own judgement derived from my own due diligence.

When I started investing, I had an advisor as well. However, I was too naive and listened to him blindly. In the end, I ended up paying too much for underperformance and I found out that he was pushing only funds from 1 company because he gets a fatter commission. From then on, I swore never to go through any advisor unless he/she gets paid by the hour and not by commission or size of trades.

Now I'm saving upfront already by doing my own due diligence and balance my own portfolio quarterly. This will reduce my costs and increase my investment knowledge and experience.

Going back to the 5.5% sales charge, I'd pass on Public Mutual for the time being. I'm with DWS mainly and I pay only 2 - 2.5% sales charge on equity funds if I invest monthly and the performance is comparable to PM.

It's DWS investments. It is the funds management arm of Deutsche Bank. I get discounts as I'm a customer of their discount brokerage account. I'm not sure if Malaysian residents have access to this from Malaysia.

Investments can start from as low as EUR50.