Formed by former NTUC Income chief executive Tan Kin Lian, the Financial Services Consumers Association (Fisca) is an independent not-for-profit organisation.
Mr Tan, who has come out of retirement to act as president of Fisca, said the new association will focus on researching financial and investment products that are distributed here, and educating the public about saving and investing.
'The key aims of Fisca are to educate consumers on financial matters and to help them select financial products that give good value for their savings and investments,' said Mr Tan.
Fisca's formation comes after thousands of local investors lost millions of dollars from complex structured products that were linked to collapsed United States investment bank Lehman Brothers. These included DBS High Notes 5, Minibonds, Jubilee Linkearner and Pinnacle Notes.
Mr Tan said Fisca's aim will be to drive investor attention away from such glamourous products and encourage them to understand diversification, low-cost investing and the merits of looking for long-term returns.
The association, however, will not guide investors in their selection of stock or in their timing decisions, but instead will provide access to educational resources via its website and through workshops or short courses.
Fisca also plans to produce a white-list of financial products that have low charges, are well diversified and suitable for long-term investment.
'Our strategy is to educate consumers on the practical questions that face them every day like: How much should they save? Where should they put their money? Which are the safe and fair products?' added Mr Tan.
To join Fisca, individuals will have to pay an annual membership fee of $36 that will allow them to access the association's online resources and take part in the programmes.
A recent Fisca survey found that investors wanted a truly independent consumer watchdog that was not funded by any financial institution so as to avoid conflicts of interests.
To maintain its impartiality, Fisca will not seek funding from financial organisations and hopes instead to raise money from like-minded government agencies and philanthropic organisations.
The Fisca president said that the association, now run by a group of 12 volunteers, would need about 100 paying members to remain viable.
He added that Fisca plans to engage graduate volunteers and train them to become Fisca facilitators to help run upcoming financial literacy programmes.
Noting that Singapore already has a number of consumer bodies for investors such as the Consumers Association of Singapore and Securities Investors Association of Singapore, Mr Tan said he hopes to work with all of them in the future.
'We recognise that the needs of consumers are diverse and that the combined effort of all these bodies may still be insufficient to meet these needs,' he added.
franchan@sph.com.sg
FISCA website: www.fisca.sg
17 comments:
Congratulations Kin Lian and keep up the good work!
Way to go...
Bravo Mr Tan .Keep it up
From now onwards, the FI's will no longer dare to treat consumers the way they were treated before ie miselling Minibonds etc .
Congratulations !
Kin Lian, you are a true son of Singapore.
Congratulations!
Congratulation, Mr. Tan...
I hope FISCA will provide a SERVICE to review consumers' existing insurance policies and investment and check for mis-selling, inappropriateness of recommendation, conflict of interest and all other malpractices. This is another angle to educate the public through real life cases on insurance and investment and also to expose the product pushing and charlatan insurance agents.
In this way we can dig up enough evidences of gross unethical practices of the insurance agents and the insurers for MAS to see. If this is not able to move MAS then FISCA should look into providing legal service for members to act against them, to sue the agents and the companies they represent.
I wish FISCA all the best.
Kin Lian..CONGRATS! Thank you for spending your time and resources in helping the common people on the streets.
All the best and good health. God Bless
Hi Mr. Tan,
I was wondering whether you want to voice out the unfairness of Securities Houses like Phillip Securities hiding behind one of the condition [clause 14 and 14(A)) which reads "PSPL makes no recommendation and gives no advise and Customer not relying on PSPL's advise or recommendation."
This clause is fair for people who do online trading and received frequent online news on equity. But it should not covers agents over-sell, over commit without basis to the customers to entice them to buy the investment products. In addition, PSPL approached to encourage opening this account is flawed as their booth does not inform new account holder of the risk. Inaddition, a 48 pages conditions booklet is only given after the opening of an account. This amount to gross misrepresentation.
I don't know why MAS allows this.
Regards,
Mr Tan...you should seriously consider getting FISCA consultants to assist Minibond investors when they submit their complaints to FIDREC:
1. assistance to put the complaint together
2. accompany them for their interviews
FISCA could charge a fee for these services.FISCA should be more than a website ..more than just having education as its major objective.
By doing so, the word will spread around that FISCA is more than the sum total of CASE and the Security Investors Association.
Most investors are wary of FIDREC.They know their chances of being treated fairly by FIDREC are slim.But by supporting them, they will applaud and appreciate FISCA for life!
I will seriously like to help such an effort.
Dear Mr. Tan,
Congratulations!
You should be given the TOP JUTA Award!
You should be given a President Award!
You should be our President!
Thanks you very much
The site fisca.sg seems to be down.
Mr.Tan, congratulation.
Mr Tan,
The difference between FISCA & FiDREC is, FiDREC gets their fund to run their business through FI subscription fees. They don't dare to displease FI. That may be the reason that we can not get a fair treat on our structure note case. Since FISCA is not support by FI, I have confidence that it will be fair to customers. Can FISCA do judication like FIDREC? Please check with MAS.
Thanks & Best wish!
Mr Tan,
Your next move is forming a new political party to give S'pore citizens a CHOICE and probably a CHANGE?
I'll give my vote to you!
Congratulation,Mr Tan.
I am sure you will hv a much bigger pool of supporter than other government-linked associated like CASE, etc..
Do take precaution on any "spy" member around waiting to destroy you....
The server was down due to problem with the hosting in USA. It was not due to the heavy traffic at FISCA. The server is up now.
The articles on FISCA website are not interesting .
We need more useful , high quality articles
Mr Tan can you write a few great article per week?
Mr. Tan, does FISCA review insurance policies for members.
I am not sure if my insurance agents sold me the correct insurance plans. I have been reading your blog that there are unethical agents who sell wrong products to people to make high commission.
Is there such a service? I am worried my policies are wrong and my agents cheated on me.I don't know what they sold me.I just trusted them and paid for the policies. I have no idea where i am going.
Yes, FISCA should have a existing insurance policy review service. It is to help members to see if they have been sold rubbish insurance products and also to check for mis-selling and conflict of interest.
I am sure this will be a popular service because consumers now realise that insurance agents cannot be trusted . How can they tell us to buy whoelife and endowment only and our coverage still not enough, the return so poor. We want know whether we were fooled and cheated by our trusted agents.
Mr. tan , do have this service before it is too late for many of us. Many of us are loaded with wholelife and endowment products and the premium piled up to our nose.We fear we may have to cancell some but this will leave some orphaned money to benefit the insurers.We want to cut losses, so please help us.
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