Sunday, March 27, 2011

Damage to Singapore's reputation

A foreign professional came to work in Singapore She worked hard and saved a large part of her salary to be used by her husband in building his business later on. In the meantime, she wanted to invest the savings.

An independent financial adviser sold her an investment-linked policy designed for high net worth individuals. The adviser deliberately removed certain information about the charges in this policy and lied to her about the charges. After saving for 18 months, the policy started to take away a  high monthly charge. She learned for the first time about this high charge, which would be taken away from her savings for the rest of the future years. If she terminate the saving plan now, she would lose more than 70% of the savings. It was quite heart-breaking.

She told me, "Mr. Tan, when I first came to Singapore, I was impressed with the Singapore system - honest government, a good standard of living. I never thought that I could be cheated by a respectable insurance company and by the financial adviser. After this experience, I have now changed my views about Singapore".

Tan Kin Lian
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3 comments:

yujuan said...

This foreign investor did not keep tabs on how the Lehman bros structured investments were being played out in sneaky Singapore. All insurance and bank investment products are toxic, and are to be avoided at all costs.
Many times safer to invest in Hongkong or Australia.
Our govt are anti local and pro foreigner cheating companies, even fly by night ones, as long as these entities could jack up the GDP Growth, so that their Ministers
could be paid by the millions.

March 27, 2011 11:49 PM
Unknown said...

It's sad but we get these a lot.
If its intentional concealment, cant she lodge a complaint to Fidrec?

Well, it takes 2 hands to clap. If consumers do their own research and know what they want, chances of miselling would be lower.

March 28, 2011 6:19 PM
Bai Hu said...

Well, i really pity this lady for being cheated. I have a similar experience. What happened is that my schoolmate who came from China, graduated together with me in NUS. But instead of entering the construction industry, she became a financial consultant in a reputable company. She came to approach me & at same time hid a lot of important info from me. But who is to blame? I should have been more careful then. Nowadays, i dunno why people have become so dishonest even to friends or even their relatives. Sad......

April 03, 2011 4:20 PM

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