Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Half Truths about Life Insurance

Saturday, September 03, 2011

Half Truths about Life Insurance

An insurance agent is taught many ways to convince a customer to buy life insurance, even if the customer suspect that he is not being given a good deal. Here are some half truths told by the agent and what the correct situation really is. Read this FAQ.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Dear Mr Tan Kin Lian,

I admire your good intention. However, the FAQ you wrote is too brief for the understanding of the general public. It would be good if you can throw in actual examples of term insurance and life insurance for comparison. Furthermore, not many people can grasp the concept of reduced protection needs at old age. I convinced myself this point by plotting a cumulative expenditure curve versus cumulative savings curve and subsequently bought a mortgage reducing plan to cover my protection needs. I can forsee more personal attacks on you by insurance agents who face greater difficulty in pushing out life plans. It would it be good if you can write more to explain the difficult concepts behind, like the way Mr Alex Au did.; September 03, 2011 11:46 AM
Anonymous said...: The recently launched early payout wholelife plan called Vivocare by ntuc is another example. First ask why it was launched? Before this there were 2 other companies who have it and not until a long lapse of time that ntuc decided to have one.The answer is ntuc agents were losing out their vivolife plan because they couldn't explain the lack of this feature.So they lost.
Now , ask again another question. Is this feature easily claimable?
The answer is NO..Doctors consulted found that it is VERY DIFFICULT generally for people to discover the early stage or first stage of cancer unless they have VERY FREQUENT THOROUGH EXPENSIVE medical checkouts which how many will do and could afford. SOME consumers may do for a few years but will eventually give up, after spending so much money without discovering the first stage of the cancer. Absurd, right?In short, discovering the early stage of the cancer is like winning a $10million TOTO, ie the probability of discovering early stage is 0.00005% chance.
My point is, do insurance agents will ever disclose this fact and tell the whole truth and conduct a due diligence before dumping it on their policyholders?.NO...not even half truth..instead they will use scare tactics to frighten their usually clueless customers into buying.Is this ethical? Pushing life insurance has never been ethical. Hope these agents realise when they found themselves in hell.
They can spend their MDRT, COT or TOT money there. They are cursed money fleeced from their trusting policyholders.

The Insider; September 03, 2011 5:41 PM
Tan Choon Hong said...: Your greatest contribution to public education on financial planning is in revealing the dark side of the insurance business. This must have cost you dearly in relations with your former colleagues in the business. From the consumers’ perspective you are a heaven-sent for saving us from unscrupulous agents. Thank you.; September 03, 2011 11:58 PM