Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Financial advisers can benefit or destroy consumers

I met a marketing director of a computer software to be used by financial advisers. He wanted to see how we can collaborate. I told him that there are two types of advisers:

  • Those that benefit consumers by helping them to take advantage of tax incentives and earn a better yield, net of tax and charges
  • Those that mislead consumers into buying a life insurance policy that gives a poor yield
He agreed with my views. He was previously a financial adviser in Holland. He told me that Holland had the same bad experience of mis-selling and that the regulators had to impose fines on insurance companies and advisers. I told him that, to my knowledge, no fine was imposed on insurance companies, although the case of malpractices is quite bad in Singapore. He agreed to write to me and share some of his perspective as a financial adviser.

Tan Kin Lian

2 comments:

yujuan said...

The worst financial adviser is your close family member, your close friend and your close colleague who is selling products
on commission basis.
We are always wary of strangers, but we tend to place trust on people we know, whom very often turn out to be our worst enemies.

zhummmeng said...

Isn't that what insurance agents are taught to do first? Go for the warm leads, your family members, your circle of influence and so forth.They trust you and therefore easier to con, no questions asked.
So you know who is your enemy when it comes to financial products.
I remember a case of man kenna conned by own brother, sold an endwoment that never broke even.The case went to court if I am not wrong.
The truth is the insurance agents are all salesmen and salesmen's motive is to go for products with highest commission . Products with highest commission are at the expense of the buyers. Commission is cost. The ceo's obscene high salary is cost. The senior management obscene salary is cost. Cost affects return and cost of protection.No need rocket science knowledge to arrive at this conclusion, right? That is why traditional wholelife and endowment product have gone to the dogs is because the people running the company want highest salary and thinking you consumers are cash cows to con.
If insurance companies are run by robots like the factories cost can be lowered tremendously. Eg. your old cathode ray TV cost 10 times your flat tube plasma, right? Your old fridge could buy 5 fridges today, right? No human beings in between cost will come down.. Robots are not greedy, unethical, unscrupulous and can mis sell or lie or can con you . Only human beings do like the insurance agents despite given a conscience.

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