Friday, October 17, 2008

Petition to MAS - review sales training and marketing processes

I have extracted the particulars of 273 investors who signed the Petition to MAS to review the sales training and marketing process of the financial institutions. I will be sending the Petition to MAS today.

It does not matter that other people did not sign yet. The number of signatories is more than sufficient.

If MAS acts and carries out the review, and found that the bank has not provided sufficient training to the sales representatives, it will be helpful to the investors who have been misled.

Investors who bought directly from the brochures or advertisements, can claim that the sales materials were misleading, and that essential information have been withheld, or were presented in a misleading way. Your case is not as strong as those who were misled by the sales representatives, but there are grounds to support your case as well.

All the best!
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Tan,
For those of us who bought from our remisers/brokers directly in response to the newspapers advertisement, can you help us draft a sampleletter to the FI?

October 17, 2008 9:49 AM
Anonymous said...

In your petitions you should state that financial products should be marketed like drugs and medicine. The 'marketing' materials or ads should only INFORM and NOT promote or tout the products. It should provide details like those required for medicines, the downsides and upsides of the products, gender, age, and other necessary details.
Ads and brochures should specify market segments and suitability and they are not deceitful and ambiguous , and not to play on the semantics like ntuc ads for revosave. They should have one aim in mind , ie. to inform the public about the availability of the products.
Presently there is much to be desired in the sales training. Currently the training focuses on the "how to' like
1.how to cheat
2.how to lie
3.how to cover up
4.how to make prospects buy more
and NOT
1. How to help address the needs of the clients
2.What is best solution to specific needs
Now the sales training focuses on 3 aspects of the cleints; their emotion, greed and fear and nothing on meeting their financial needs

Lastly, a reminder to MAS of the section 27 of FAA, the cornerstone
of financial planning and which will be the underpinning of the success of the industry.
This calls for the banning of product advice as one of the options in the fact finding form and make section 27 approach as compulsory.
There is urgent need to raise the standard of advice.The courses the
consultants take are shits and crappy. No wonder the consultants RM and insurance agents are salesmen selling snake oil products.
There is a need to review the licenses for various group of products and the bar to be raised to ensure that the consumers get the best advice.
Anyway, the above are some suggestions. MAS should know what needs to be changed and enforced.
For MAS it is a matter of whose interest it wants to represent so to achieve fair dealing outcome.

October 17, 2008 10:27 AM

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