I'm not a bleeding heart.
I'm not a Bodhisattva.
I'm more of a man-whore who believes in self-cultivation and walking our own way.
But then, sometimes man-whore also got passion.
So here goes:
Life Insurance with No Commissions
Old news leh!
Want to bet?
Those of you studying business finance courses at tertiary institutions, do you know about it?
Have fun taking a survey on how many of your classmates knew about it? Do exclude the lecturers. Wait you embarrass them and they black-mark you, don't come crying to me!
If this is the reality for business finance students, what more for the common person out there in the workforce?
What?
These insurance products are only available early 2015 next year....Cheh!
You mean you can make the choices all by yourself already?
For those of you who are still in school or National Service, and will be joining the workforce next year, the timing couldn't be better!
Now you have months to ask the questions you've always wanted to ask (not to me!), do all the research needed to discover what's the critical differences between Term and Whole-life policies. What actual illnesses do this Critical illness rider cover? What is a rider anyway? Etc, etc, etc.
"Free from commissions" means Do-It-Yourself. Which also means if you made the wrong choices, you have no one to blame but yourself!
Of course if you have no time, no interest, or you prefer to have someone tell you what's better for you (The man who wants to buy new shoes) it's perfectly alright to pay someone to make that decision for you, if you so wished.
For eg, I prefer to buy breakfast from hawker centres in the morning than make one myself.
Now make a wild guess why did MAS only start with Term and Whole-life policies, and with only one Critical illness rider?
What about other insurance enhancements? Why they not included?
In the words of Pua Chu Kang: "Use your brain, use your brain!"
And while you are at it, do ponder on this point 7 from the MAS website (I added the bold fonts):
"7 The sub-limit of $200,000 for whole life products seeks to alleviate the risk of consumers buying whole life products beyond their means and protection needs. This is because whole life products have higher premiums than term life products, and typically require a longer-term premium commitment. Policyholders who surrender their whole life policies in the early years of the policy also stand to lose a significant portion of their premium outlay."
Is it because big daddy don't trust us (the consumers) to make our own decisions or they don't have much faith in paid agents to look after the interests of their clients?
Of course they are great professional agents out there; and in all industries, there will be black-sheep.
And there will be consumers who make bad decisions, no matter how much publicity out there :(
Singapore Man of Leisure (welcome to my blog; just google it!)
