Friday, October 03, 2008

Immense pressure to sell the structured products

Dear Mr Tan KL,

In today's TodayOnline a certain L H Tang, who is a personal financial consultant gave a first person perspective, of his job in the forum letter. Below is an excerpt:
"......Consumers should understand that consultants are under immense pressure to think of ways such products can be“beneficial” to them."
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/279135.asp

The content is quite similar to that posted in the Straits Time Online Forum on 01/10/08 by Ms Geraldine Teng. If we are able to gather more of such statements from Relationship Managers /

Financial Consultants it would be evidentially beneficial in proving that these RM / FC were under immense pressure to push or hard sell such high risk products as 'low risk' products backed by the reputable banks.

Your kind assistance in this matter is highly commendable.

TKH

REPLY
Financial advisers or relationship managers who face similar pressure to achieve sales results can send an e-mail to me at kinlian@gmail.com
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3 comments:

Chee said...

Dear Mr. Tan,

As you can see this products are too complicated for even the RMs to explain, can I have your opinion whether those FCs from life insurers knows how those underlying funds work in the Investment Link policy? I used to be a FC with one of the biggest agency with an American insurer and the agancy manager doesnt'have a clue abt how the underlying funds work. They only know how to push the product.

Teng Joo

October 03, 2008 6:01 PM
Anonymous said...

I would say that all RMs and FAs face the same type of pressure, maybe the difference is only the name of the bank and the target set.
If banking is just about savings, current, FD accounts,loans and LCs, RMs and FAs would not have existed. This is true in the good old days in banking.
These many young, inexperienced RMs and FAs have no chance to serve the rich and ultra rich so the obvious target are the mass market of uncles, aunties and ordinary folks with tens or hundreds of thousands dollars. When a credit event (Lehman bankruptcy) occurs, therein lies the mass tragedy for these unlucky folks. Why 158 yr Lehman fail now, of all times? Isn't this unlucky?

October 03, 2008 9:06 PM
Anonymous said...

I think we must be realistic. What is our complaint? As far as I can see, mis-selling, misrepresentation, it is high risk, too complex, and should not be sold in Singapore. ok, what is the dollar value of all the structured products sold here that is linked to Lehman? $500 million may be a reasonable guess. If the FI or MAS agree that they are in the wrong,they have opened a can of worms because we are not talking about minibonds anymore but all the structured products, CLN, any derivatives linked to CDO, CDS etc. ever sold in Singapore that is still floating around out there. Now what is that value? $30 billion? Unless the FI comes clean in what they are doing all these years with these structured products, and unless the other product investors (the ones that did not have a credit event)group together as well, this may be a bridge too far

October 04, 2008 4:47 PM

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