Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Financial invention vs Consumer Protection

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Financial invention vs Consumer Protection

Read this article.

4 comments:

zhummmeng said...: Invention is to find a way to make life easier. Innovation is to improve the invention further to make it more efficeint and effective and lower cost.
Eg: your 20 inch CRT colour TVs cost you at least $4000 20 years ago. Today, it is only $200 and this can be only found in a very poor country.
Can this be applied to life insurance products?
No!!! insurance products are like 'labour intensive" products which rely on humans. Human labour (not human capital) cost is on the rise. The CEO wants million dollar salary; the senior managers want 6 figure salaries; the insurance agents want high commission, low commission don't want to sell or recommend. The interest rate is so low, insurers can't do any thing; the investment return is so low becuase they now lose more for you because low annual bonus.
These are the basic raw materials that go into designing the product.
What you get today are products that the 'real value' are buried under layers and layers of rubbish disguised as ' additional benefits" and the ' additional benefits' are now used as the "unique selling points"(USPs) of the products and NOT the basic, primary efficacy of the products.
Combined with another 'feature", a very powerful feature is to bait the greedy agents enough so that they can stoop so low, to do anything to make sure these rotten products are dumped on the consumers especially their trusting existing policyholders.
This is evident today
that the once despised anticipated endowment product is raised from the ashes , with a new name , new identity, repackaged with additional features to give it a new wrapping is now marketed as life style products with cashbacks, coupons or dividends, with all kind of names which are your OWN money returned to you but mis-sold as interest earned or annuities.A despicable product in the past, it is still it.
This is what is happening in the life insurance industry. Any innovations? Innovation means improvement, right? Anything like protection is cheaper? return is higher? Risk is lower? No!! they are going the opposite way and some companies call their products revolutionary. It is real con job.
Should avoid wholelife, endowment and anticipated products.; July 19, 2009 2:15 PM
Anonymous said...: Policyholders, especially those shwo have paid premiums many years, do need protection from changes in their insurance policies. Insurance Companies must not be allowed to put their long-standing faithful policyholders' terminal bonuses at risk when they suddenly change their investment strategy. I hope FISCA will be successful in helping us.; July 20, 2009 1:57 PM
Anonymous said...: Insurance companies are inventing scam products to let their greedy insurance agents to sell. If not they have nothing to sell. Every time they call me they have a new crap just invented product to tell me but they want me to buy . For what? I have enough coverage and I have an investment plan. I am not a new product collector and I tell them this. These agents I have thrown them away and yet they call me. Yes, they tell you the nice things about the product but only 1/2 truth; July 20, 2009 3:52 PM
Anonymous said...: When ntuc published a set of past return figures for thier wholelife and endowment products it was misrepresenting and misleading the public that ntuc products will be able to give those returns in the future.The future returns of the current products are no where near them, in fact about 1/2 only.
There was no caveat to qualify the figures.
These returns were achieved during Mr. TanKL's time.
This is an example of "invention" and misrepresentation and MAS must stop
companies from using misleading information.; July 21, 2009 11:49 AM