Saturday, October 30, 2010

Don't combine protection needs

Published in Straits Times Online, Oct 30, 2010

I REFER to Ms Pearlyn Koh's letter ("Insurance clients have different needs"; Thursday). The different needs of the clients can be best met through term insurance, medical insurance, disability insurance and other protection products that are fairly priced and targeted at these needs.
The consumer should not combine the protection needs with the accumulation of savings in the whole-life and unit-linked policies where, in many cases, 50 per cent or more of the future savings could be taken away from them.

Ms Koh asked consumers to seek advisers to help them address their needs. Consumers should be careful to pick honest advisers. I have seen quite a few instances where dishonest advisers sold the wrong product to consumers using half truths and outright lies.
I urge the authorities to set up a hotline for consumers to address their complaints about being sold products that were not properly explained to them, and were unfair in their charges.

Tan Kin Lian

3 comments:

zhummmeng said...

Those insurance agents who push product definitely engage in half truth half lies.
If the agents suppress or conceal the negative features they are suppressing truth and which the FAA requires agents to disclose fully including the commission they get from the product.
Suppressing the truth and replace it with lies is very common.
Imagine their trainer teaches them 'to say only when asked if not don't tell".

Anonymous said...

I bought the paymyuni policy from ntuc. the agent print out the benefit illustration and purposely left out the pages on effect of deduction and distribution cost.

i need to ask then only they show me.

zhummmeng said...

Paymyuni is an endowment with a lot of crap frills to hide the truth.These frills eat away the already low return.
Basically, endowment is made of a term insurance plus and investment. Paymyuni bundled them together.Do you need the insurance? Why don't you just have pure saving?

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