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 [...]

On Good Friday morning, I received a call from a friend asking about the medishield plan for her baby girl as she has to be hospitalized for further investigation due to persistent cough. Sensing that she was abit lost, I explained to her the admin procedures and told her not to worry about [...]

The Life Insurance Association (LIA) has released the performance figures for the life insurance industry for the year 2008. I’ll just zoom into 2 points in the report which I find disturbing.

Claims Payout

A total of $5.12 billion was paid out, out of which only $359 million was [...]

Many a time, you can find insurance companies dangling freebies to attract customers. It is not unusual to find them at electronic and pc fairs where they will display advertisements showing freebies such as digital cameras or printers. You would have mistaken them as another electronic booth!

It is very common to find [...]

My client ask me about a mid term savings plan that gives a impressive return (considering the current low interest bear market). She was introduced to the plan by a bank Relationship Manager (RM) when she wanted a fixed deposit. This is how the RM illustrated the plans to her:

Interest in saving account [...]

When deciding what brand of buying cookies to buy, do you find yourself going for the one with nicer and more expensive-looking packaging if you have no preferred brand? This is normal. The nice picture, the nice texture of the packaging and the exotic name gives us a impression of a delicious cookie. [...]

Endowment plans are a common sight in many people’s insurance portfolio. A common way to mis-sell is to preach the benefit of having returns if nothing happens at the end of a term. So many people end up getting endowment plans when Term plans might have been the much better choice. Endowment plans are basically saving [...]

The recent collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent troubles facing its brilliantly named Minibonds shock many investors who though that they had bought real bonds and not some complicated structured products. Some of these structured products have even been sold as fixed deposits. Financial institutions, greedy for the investors’ dollar, mis-sold them to thousands [...]

The last few days in the financial market have been much more turbulent than the typhoon and hurricane weather around the world. Lehman Brother’s filling for chapter 11, sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America and the big one, the threat of AIG, parent of AIA, going bust. Following the appearance of crowds at [...]

In the course of doing insurance summary and review, I have come across many Investment-Linked-Policies (ILP) in client’s insurance portfolio. How they came into getting ILP is another story altogether. What troubles and baffles me is how the investment portfolio is constructed.

The vast majority of ILPs are heavily or totally invested [...]