A woman approached me to advise on two life insurance policies that is recommended for her daughter. When she learned that my consulting fee is $150 per hour, she felt it was too expensive.
I asked her to look at the "distribution cost" shown in the benefit illustration of the two life insurance policies. She got a bigger shock. It was several thousand dollars.
She came back and agreed to pay $150 for advice on a suitable financial plan for her daughter. I referred her to this $6 book. http://c-pearl.com/cart.aspx?ID=19
I am not prepared to spend a few hours to give advice on financial planning for $150. The insurance company charges a "distribution cost" of a few thousand dollars and the insurance agent don't even do a proper job.
You know people often say that the insurance agents are making a living and that is why they are behaving as they are , like peddling products for quick closure, using gifts to induce the customers to buy shorten the sales cycle and even lying and suppression of material information.
ReplyDeleteMaking a living is not an excuse. Everybody is making a living too. Customers' money is a hard earned one and is it because insurance agents are also making a living therefore they should be allowed to fleece the customers by deceitful means?
Aren't the drug traffickers are also making a living to feed their family? What about the prostitutes? the conmen? the thieves?
Life insurance selling should be cleaned up so that the market place will be safe for consumers to make purchases.
This is a part excerpt from an article about elderly prostitutes in Korea.
ReplyDelete"I know that I shouldn't do this," said the elderly prostitute with the limp, "but no one can say that I should starve to death rather than come here." She agreed to talk with The Associated Press at a nearby coffee shop after she failed to solicit any customers, but refused to give her name because her family doesn't know she's a prostitute.
She started out selling Bacchus drinks about 20 years ago. A couple years later she began selling sex. She still does it so she can pay for arthritis treatment — about $250 a month."
However in Singapore insurance agents are also seen doing the same thing in roadshows but TO ENRICH THEMSELVES SO THEY CAN DRIVE EXPENSIVE CAR AND LIVE IN CONDO in contrast to the elderly people doing for different reason...eg. to treat an illness...for 3 meals...to survive, to self support because they have been abandoned by their children.
Every year many able bodied men and women in Singapore like accountants, graduates, engineers etc are joining the life insurance to get rich quick, for easy money, for fast money AT THE EXPENSE OF THEIR CUSTOMERS, ESPECIALLY THE UNWARY POOR, UNEDUCATED FOLKS. The elderly Korean prostitutes are doing it NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF THEIR CUSTOMERS BUT IN RETURN FOR MOMENTS OF SENSUAL SATISFACTION.
MAS should look into the industry to SANITISE it.