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I have heard of many cases where financial advisers are selling non-regulated products, such as the Genneva Gold scheme and land banking products.
Perhaps MAS should ban financial advisers from selling non-regulated products, as the consumers may not be aware about the difference between regulated and non-regulated products?
How is MAS supposed to do so? The advisors can easily cheat on the annual declaration regarding their affiliations with other companies.
ReplyDeleteI've heard many rumours about agents from a very big international insurance company here in sg selling gold as a sideline income. With a ready pool of clients, these clients who have already bought policies from the agents would no doubt trust the agent in their judgement regarding investments.
Looking at the papers today, Msia expects the amount invested in Geneva in Msia to be about RM 10 BILLION. I wonder how much money Singaporean investors have put in.
My take on this is that for such cases whereby the financial planner/consultant/whatever fancy title sells the gold to the client as a sideline investment, he/she has betrayed the trust of the client. This is not so much an issue of caveat emptor, but rather caveat venditor.
I believe that MAS/CAD should allow the investors to sue the agents for breach of trust and also to claim damages against them. It is not easy for the client to discern which investment is right or wrong when he/she has already invested large sums of money to the agent/s company in the past. A bridge of trust has been established, and that is what caused the ponzi scheme to be so successful.
this is true. mas licensed agents will add unnecessary credibility to these fancy products that are actually not regulated.
ReplyDeleteserious trauma can be created as a result.
Hi! I was the one who wrote to the forum. Initially, I'd stated that it was a "former manager" who'd tried to convince me that I should put my money into Genneva.
ReplyDeleteThen the ST editor changed it to "financial professional", which is wrong. My former manager was in the education/training industry, and not finance.
When I contacted the administrator, she changed it to "ex-colleague".
It was an error on ST's part and I blame no financial professionals for it. :)
Cheers
Grace Tan
Grace,
ReplyDeletethere is no need to clarify, it is well known that the insurance indsutry is infested with agents moonlighting in all sorts of get rich quick schemes from gold, oil to MLM.
MAS is just looking away and pretend that they are dedicated salesmen. Although it is a great opportunity for MAS to get rid of half of these agents wonder why it is not doing it.
From this you can see the insurance agents' motives.They are not interested in the consumers' well being but their own pockets. Beware of them, especailly the product peddlers and pushers.They are no different from the drug pushers.They push you toxic products like the gold, oilpod, and landbanking.
MAS is being watched by consumers whether it is walking the talk, ie protecting interest of the consumers in the FAIR review. Get rid of these agents and don't let taint the good name real advisers.