Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Losing its cooperative character

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Losing its cooperative character

I met a friend at a cooperative dinner last night.

He made this observation, "Mr. Tan, when you were with Income, you kept the expenses low and offered an alternative to the people that were different from the other insurance companies. I can see that much of what you have done is being reversed and Income is now becoming like the other insurance companies. I feel quite sad for the policyholders of Income."

I told him that I agree with this observation. I hope that the management and board of Income will realise that many policyholders feel this way.

10 comments:

hongjun said...: I agree; July 05, 2008 9:30 AM
SingaSoft said...: to be fair, expense is only one side of the equation. If higher expenses bring in higher return and better quality, it is in fact a desirable thing.

At this moment it is too early to know if those expenses can be justify.

NTUC Income has been hurt by the protest, it will take some time for the new management to prove that they have made the right decisions.; July 05, 2008 12:55 PM
zhummmeng said...: Everybody can see that...Now their agents won't dare to claim that 98% of the profit is distributed to the policyholders....Now it is telling us to let them keep for us and they invest or gamble in high risk equities so that we MAY get an ang pow in the FUTURE, 20 or maybe 30 years from now, it depends...it de..de..pends ...hmmm, hmmmm, that is right, ..if we make money only. This is the beauty of special bonus formula,so much money that allows them to use double up strategy,like "Nick Leeson double up formula'(patented)
Don't worry, they also have employed a team of famous fortune tellers and fengshui master to help out in managing your special bonus.They have sure win, market timing techniques to complement Nick Leeson's.Can throw away those technical chartist garbage. This is the company's propreity system .; July 05, 2008 1:08 PM
TopSage said...: I agree too; July 05, 2008 5:08 PM
siewkhim said...: The board should have offered Kin Lian either a Senior CEO or a Mentor CEO position. In this way none of these problems would have crop up.; July 05, 2008 6:44 PM
zhummmeng said...: Ya , lah. The chair made a mistake...He thought ntuc is a bank...and banks always change chair.
Don't worry , now they have 20 solid chairs..they can rotate; July 05, 2008 10:56 PM
Raymond T said...: I think NTUC Income doesn't give a hoot at what we think nowadays.

What they are thinking is that as long as NTUC Income is still slightly "better" (i.e. premiums wise) than the commercial insurance companies, we simple and easily duped folks on the streets will still obediently flock to them.

I would request that NTUC Income continue to uphold its previous good work such that it continues to maintain the loyalty of its current policy holders.

(ps - To be fair though, my recent claims experience with NTUC for my mum's medical bills were very smooth and seamless. Kudos to them on this aspect.); July 05, 2008 11:31 PM
zhummmeng said...: We must appreciate there are areas that ntuc come top.Some old guards are trying to hold on to the legacy and desperately becuase the new management is also as eager to shake it off, to distance themselves to show that their management skill is superior than the old one. It is an one upmanship game that it is playing, and poor policyholders are getting all the brunts.
Mt observation is it is slowly going to the dogs and only trace of its old value lies in the name only.I am not surprised that this cooperative name will be dropped and replaced first by the word social enterprise. This is the first step and the word social enterprise has no hint of the cooperativeness but another entity which might be 'charitable' and other entities can have this too.
AIA, GE, PRU,and the rest can co-opt this as one of its values.
In fact, these companies have done their share of charity and have been good corporate citizens.; July 06, 2008 10:20 AM
Wayne said...: I am always of the impression that NTUC, Income, Fairprice are cooperative entities that exist to provide a standard benchmark in terms of price-vs-quality for the markets, products or businesses they venture into.
For example, for Fairprice's housebrand, consumers know that any other brands that are priced higher than the housebrand are paying for a brand premium. Similarly, Income's position in the financial products space should be of such nature. However, in recent days, Income seems to be more "flamboyant" in their marketing and for someone young, i.e in their early 20s, you will not be surprised that they do not know Income is a cooperative entity.; July 06, 2008 6:45 PM
Walker said...: I always see the similarity between Mr Tan and John Bogle, hence NTUC Income and Vanguard. 3 years ago, after studying the products sold by the mutual fund industry, including those big insurance guys, I decided to invest, using SRS, in the Income Growth.

However, with the current team of management, I am concern...

I strongly believe that cost makes a difference, especially if it is compounded over long period of time.; July 07, 2008 7:40 PM