1 year ago, an FA firm (not an IFA) ran a promotion that offers a ‘free’ first year term coverage by rebating the whole first year premium. Now that promotion has backfired and the insurer wants to claw back more than $7m in commissions and volume discounts due to the high [...]

If you have been approached by an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) before, you would probably been told that IFAs can offer products from many providers and put client’s interest first. There is a fact and an opinion in the statement. The fact is that IFAs does have access to many different products from [...]

CPF Board has recently released more details on the CPF LIFE Scheme. The CPF Life Payout Estimator and Information Booklet can be found on their website here – CPF LIFE Website. I’ve done some comparison between the CPF LIFE vs Commercial Annuity already, I’ll do some simple comparison between [...]

TM AsiaLife has announced the withdrawal of their champion endowment plans, namely: TM Education (LP), TM Nest Egg (LP, LP05). This spells bad news for consumers as these plans offer great value to policyholders in terms of high guaranteed values and unbeatable track record. TM AsiaLife holds the record of being the only [...]

An insurer placed an advertisement in today’s The Straits Times announcing their record of never reducing their bonus for their participating policies since they started more than 60 years ago. The are maintaining this “unmatched record” this year. According to the information I got, this move to reassure the consumers was prompted by [...]

I did not take note of this plan until an agent friend ask me about it when her client consulted her. She could not believe that such plans exist. Yes, such endowment plans do exist.

Endowment, or for that matter, Participating (Par) or With-Profits plans, have bonuses that will be declared yearly. [...]

The performance of different investment options are beyond the control of investors. Followers of Modern Portfolio Theory believes that there are 2 types of risks – Systemic and Non-Systemic (or aka un-systemic). Non-systemic risks can be minimized through diversification. Nothing can be done about Systemic risk. In that sense, one can do something [...]

Following the announcement of the changes to CPF LIFE and the release of some indicative numbers for the 4 CPF LIFE schemes, a question quickly came to mind: How does the commercial annuity compare to CPF LIFE? The following is a comparison of CPF LIFE and a leading commercial annuity.

The criteria [...]

Acting Manpower Minister Mr Gan Kim Yong announced in parliament yesterday on the changes to the national annuity scheme. The number of choices is reduced from 12 to 4 – called LIFE Basic, LIFE Balance, LIFE Plus and LIFE Income. The following table illustrates the different amount of payout for a 55 year [...]

Most young Singaporeans would engage interior designers (ID) at least once in their lives as they get their first HDB flat after marriage or after reaching 35. They hope to have their dream home with the help of the designer.

During the initial design phase, the ID would offer his views and [...]