Secure investments 'misleading'
By Samantha Washington
BBC Radio 4's Money Box
As guarantor, Lehman going bust did not result in compensation
Thousands of people who put their money into investments that promised their capital was secure face losing some or all of their money.
Article.
MAS should vet the brochures of insurance and investment products.
ReplyDeleteThey are misleading and misrepresenting and so are the sales spiel.
Eg. in one of ntuc posters at Bugis a big poster screams " $5000 Guaranteed" which is actually a guaranteed refund of your premium. It is like taking your premium with left hand and immediately return half of it with the right hand.
Another poster says you get up to 6 times of the invested amount and it never mentions that you need to hold for 50 years and what is the return. Imagine inflation running at 4% over 50 years the investment is worth less in real term.
The FIs hide from the buying public and hopefully some suckers fall for them. Suckers are aplenty and the agents prey on these suckers and there is no shortage of them because a sucker is born every minute.
Only savings, current and FD accounts are secured directly and fully by the bank and that provided the bank is reputable and secure.
ReplyDeleteAll other products and services that the bank take your money is not secured by the bank. The bank is just like an agent to sell those products or provide a service.
If you trust only the bank which many do, just remember above, no matter what the RM tell you. In this way you will never go wrong, at least in Singapore with the local banks. For foreign ones until Dec 2010, when the full govt guarantee for deposits expired.