PRUDENTIAL SAVINGS SAGA

[Bigoya]

Dude, that's where you are wrong, it's the 4.75%, 3.25% that is what I'm looking at. That's front and center of insurance policies.
And of course the maturity value. The 4.75% ain't after deduction aye?

You got me lost here. I could no longer tell if we are looking at the same or different thing.
(Unsolicited Content (Commercial solicitation / Ads / Referrals / Spam))

Also yes, the projected maturity value, that should not be emphasize, the part where most people should know is the guaranteed maturity value. Agents should emphasize that instead of projected maturity value.

truth is.. wait, when was the 1st endowment launched again?
anyway, when it was first launched, no body had any knowledge of how endowment works or how how much can an insurrer afford to guarantee or project I guess. In the past there were more stock speculators than investors btw.
Everybody were probably optimistic that insurance companies can hit between 3.75% - 5.25% based on the old BI, who would seriously bother about guaranteed and non-G returns?

But now with capital guaranteed plans, you can be sure that every agent is selling such plan and over-emphasizing on the word "capital guaranteed".

Insurance agents are salesman who pretend to be financial advisers. And thus the masses thought they are financial planners. Don't you know that? That is like what almost every insurance agents do.

Just look at the NTUC ad about retirement, are you sure they are not selling themselves as financial planners instead of selling the fact that they are purely insurance salesmen?

No matter what impression masses had of insurance, it's caused by the insurance industry and word of mouth. Why is there so much misconception and misunderstanding? Who caused it?

Why isn't the salesman at NTUC being accused of not teaching how to cook?
The image is projected by insurance companies. And that shouldn't be up to us to change that image.

Just take a look at the ads,

Does any of these looks like salesmen ad or financial planning ads?

If they wanna do financial plannings, go and be a proper one.

Alright, this part I have to give it to you. But financial planning comes in grades. There can be detailed planning and simple planning. What salesmen are doing, apart from those that do unethical selling, are probably doing simple and intermediate planning.

Insurance companies come out with plans and platforms, theory wise they works with financial protection and wealth buidling, but it is the fees and charges for the "service" that eats into the returns.

Agents are the ones who does the planning (or selling), but it is up to individual how each one does it.
Insurance companies have vested interest, neither could you expect MAS to tag an officer along to every individual agent to join fieldwork and make sure appointment is morally and ethically carried out right?

The unfortunate truth is, in singapore, we are not financially educated in primary or secondary schools.

It's getting late, I might be just rumbling and not making any sense.. pardon me.

 

[Bigoya]

Dunno wat kind of ppl u have been talking to, but common sense tells me that % return Sld be the easiest unit that most ppl use for comparison, simply bcos almost ppl are used to seeing % in almost all financial products (bank interest, ssb, fd, bond, etc.) daily.

Common sense tells everyone that the advertised bank loan interest rates are net rates too, only to eventually find out the meaning of effective rates.

Yet for some reason, BI onli show the fund performance and not the projected effective yield

I'm sorry, have you read your BI, or any BIs before?

 

[Bigoya]

Exactly the point.
The projected yield is pretty much pointless and should not be emphasize at all.
And here we have agents thinking clients won't even wonder about the %.
Agents who don't think their products are misleading even when so many cases have prove otherwise and so many people still got misled anyway.

Just to be clear, I'm just sharing some sales tricks here for awareness sake.
By no means I apply them when I do my sales.

 

[Perisher]

You got me lost here. I could no longer tell if we are looking at the same or different thing.
(Unsolicited Content (Commercial solicitation / Ads / Referrals / Spam))



truth is.. wait, when was the 1st endowment launched again?
anyway, when it was first launched, no body had any knowledge of how endowment works or how how much can an insurrer afford to guarantee or project I guess. In the past there were more stock speculators than investors btw.
Everybody were probably optimistic that insurance companies can hit between 3.75% - 5.25% based on the old BI, who would seriously bother about guaranteed and non-G returns?

But now with capital guaranteed plans, you can be sure that every agent is selling such plan and over-emphasizing on the word "capital guaranteed".



Alright, this part I have to give it to you. But financial planning comes in grades. There can be detailed planning and simple planning. What salesmen are doing, apart from those that do unethical selling, are probably doing simple and intermediate planning.

Insurance companies come out with plans and platforms, theory wise they works with financial protection and wealth buidling, but it is the fees and charges for the "service" that eats into the returns.

Agents are the ones who does the planning (or selling), but it is up to individual how each one does it.
Insurance companies have vested interest, neither could you expect MAS to tag an officer along to every individual agent to join fieldwork and make sure appointment is morally and ethically carried out right?

The unfortunate truth is, in singapore, we are not financially educated in primary or secondary schools.

It's getting late, I might be just rumbling and not making any sense.. pardon me.

Since you typed so much, do not wanna waste your effort but again do not request for meet up/pm.

 

[Bigoya]

Since you typed so much, do not wanna waste your effort but again do not request for meet up/pm.

Thanks boss!

 

[Bigoya]

Just a thought, lets say today I only sell Term plans, if AXA defaults and everyone starts complaining and making hoo-haa because they lost their coverages and it may be too late for some to get a new plan due to pre-existings and increased premiums, are y'all going to ask me to come clean why I never explain default risk or show them projected premiums if they are to take up a new policy at age 40 or 50yo?

Since I'm an adviser I should probably advise everything from A to Z right, even if it takes a month to do so?

Anyway, just a random thought.

 

[Perisher]

Just a thought, lets say today I only sell Term plans, if AXA defaults and everyone starts complaining and making hoo-haa because they lost their coverages and it may be too late for some to get a new plan due to pre-existings and increased premiums, are y'all going to ask me to come clean why I never explain default risk or show them projected premiums if they are to take up a new policy at age 40 or 50yo?

Since I'm an adviser I should probably advise everything from A to Z right, even if it takes a month to do so?

Anyway, just a random thought.

It's not about things outside of the policies. But yes, I do tend to mention default risk of companies. Not A-Z but the important points. And losing all your $$ is an important point.

 

[Bigoya]

It's not about things outside of the policies. But yes, I do tend to mention default risk of companies. Not A-Z but the important points. And losing all your $$ is an important point.

Well it's a Term policies. Technically u do not have all the $$$ to loose unlike WL. But SDIC insures up to $50k of your csh value for tt matter.

"Important" is subjective. Things important to your makes another drowsy. Instead of boring people with too much technical details, they have the policy wordings to bring home and read at their own time, and if there's anything they wish to find out more, they can always seek their agents for advice. If their agent on the other hand is a salesman, they'd still hide and reserve on their explainations, how should a noobcake consumer know they are getting 101% of the required infomation truthly and not making misunderstandings on their own part?

If clients fails to do their own due deligence, why should fingers only be pointing at agents?

Besides, how many people generally take out their policies to re-read annually? And sometimes an ethical agent who genuinely wants to do an annual review with his client, some clients would convenniently self-psycho that the agent is trying to upsell them and ignore the agent's call after call after several txt msgs. 2yrs later come back and complain his agent MIA when he need to do claims.

Have anyone ever spared a thought from an agent's point of view?

 

[Bigoya]

Oh btw, I believe trust should be built, not sold.

 

[Shion]

IMHO, the relevance of par plans have declined over the years and insurers also find it tough to guarantee the returns or protection (e.g. TM current WL plan has eliminated annual bonus totally).

Yes, LifeFlex only have terminal bonus. Curious what will that amount be or how will it be calculated, anyone knows ?

Luckily my NTUC one still has bonus

 

[soneat]

Yes, LifeFlex only have terminal bonus. Curious what will that amount be or how will it be calculated, anyone knows ?

Luckily my NTUC one still has bonus

Something like 6-10 years 0.5% (of basic sum assured) for each year * number of years, 11-15 years 1% for each year * number of years... above 40years 4% for each year * number of years.

 

[havetheveryfun]

Alright, this part I have to give it to you. But financial planning comes in grades. There can be detailed planning and simple planning. What salesmen are doing, apart from those that do unethical selling, are probably doing simple and intermediate planning.

Financial planning by agents almost end up in buying this policy A, buy this policy B. When there may be better alternatives/equal alternatives/less than better alternatives out there which the agent would never tell their clients. Granted sometimes may be just that the agent doesn't know about these other alternatives. How is that considered financial planning ?

what financial planning do they really do?

you don't have hospitalization insurance - get one. help you to calculate how much coverage you need based on your salary, number of family mmbers etc. you don't have life/term insurance - get one. help you to calculate how much coverage you need based on your salary etc. you don't have disability insurance - you need one in case you can't afford to work anymore. help you to calculate how much coverage you need based on the amount of years you estimate you can't work. oh you want to put aside some savings for your future. how much money can you afford to put aside a month? ok, offer you a plan for that sum of money. That's about all the "financial planning" agents mostly do.

That's definitely not financial planning to me, more like insurance planning.

 

[havetheveryfun]

When was the last time u sat down at a Pru roadshow?
Based on my understanding, their top hot-selling plan for savings is PruWealth and top investment plan is PruSelect and PruSelect Vantage.

Where have you been all these while?

avoided insurance roadshows like the Plague after one got me to sign up for Prucash more than 5 years ago, which I cancelled after 1 year. totally nonsense product

 

[soneat]

Financial planning by agents almost end up in buying this policy A, buy this policy B. When there may be better alternatives/equal alternatives/less than better alternatives out there which the agent would never tell their clients. Granted sometimes may be just that the agent doesn't know about these other alternatives. How is that considered financial planning ?

what financial planning do they really do?

you don't have hospitalization insurance - get one. help you to calculate how much coverage you need based on your salary, number of family mmbers etc. you don't have life/term insurance - get one. help you to calculate how much coverage you need based on your salary etc. you don't have disability insurance - you need one in case you can't afford to work anymore. help you to calculate how much coverage you need based on the amount of years you estimate you can't work. oh you want to put aside some savings for your future. how much money can you afford to put aside a month? ok, offer you a plan for that sum of money. That's about all the "financial planning" agents mostly do.

That's definitely not financial planning to me, more like insurance planning.

This is very true. Same goes for bank RM.

 

[lifeishard]

This thread becomes another fight between agents and skeptics? Cannot keep to topic on how to help TS?

 

[havetheveryfun]

This thread becomes another fight between agents and skeptics? Cannot keep to topic on how to help TS?

ur funny.. whats there to help when the TS is one of the skeptics ? did u even bother to read the first post ?

want to help the original poster, go straight to the facebook link in the first post.. theres no one to help here. this thread was probably created for "awareness" only

 

[akwl88]

And with the power of SSB and STI ETF combined, the obvious two solutions for all your BTIR worries, we surely can emulate and outperform capital guaranteed endowments where ~50% of the money go to agents!

Means if the premium $2.4k for 20 years, they take $48000/2? No wonder those scums driving BMWs and Audis. Make my blood boil only.

Anyway, lets say I every month I can only set aside $200 for this purpose how ah akwl88? Can help me formulate my solution? How much go to SSB how much to ETF? And then I end everything at year 20 ok?

Remember I want it to be at least capital guaranteed, cause no agent scum stealing my money now surely I can expect more from my solution right?

Thanks in advance for your time, I know it's precious because your post count shows that you're a very busy person.

Go save up few months la

Wah lao so simple still need me say

$200 also want to scam

Tsk tsk agent

 

[akwl88]

Must have been misled by akwl and and other anti-agents then

Such plans generally has lower commissions compared to those plans commonly pushed around by agents, and it is also tougher to sell to noobcakes like students and army boys since they all like savings plans that can withdraw money one. It's easy to sell to them because they don't know what's guaranteed and non-guaranteed, they only know BI 4.75%

Also, such plans didn't exist back in the 90s. Probably only started after yr 2000? AXA's one came out last year.

The least transparent thing about the projected figures is that, 3.25% and 4.75% refers to the par fund's performance.
The $$$ below are figures calculated after distributions are deducted from the initial say, 4.75% projected values.
If anyone is to calculate the net IRR of the $$$ figures, you'd realize a lower value, which is explained in the BI under "Reduction in Yield".

Thank you for giving me a chance to explain the details to you.

Wow anyhow point fingers sia

Agents....

Ownself alr say easy to sell because pple dont know. Ownself exposed liao right for mis-selling

Par returns are not what the consumers get

Stop using the 3.25 and 4.75 figures

Totally useless

 

[akwl88]

wow i guess you must understand a few things:

1. Not every clients understand IRR. Only savvy people see the value, noobcakes will think you are trying to scam them, sounds too good to be true blah blah blah... the easiest way to close them is to really, "scam". Give them what they want, whatever their eyes light up to. Noobcakes tells you things like "I got no money to save, i should YOLO and spend all my money, you siao ar ask my trap my money for 15 - 20 years?"
Solution? This plan can save and withdraw. Good or not?

2. I sell more Early Savers than the alternate product. If my client hasn't started saving their Emergency fund, I ask them to go save in bank 1st before we talk about endowments. I loose a lot of sales because of this, but I think i'm not doing the wrong thing. I have also gone through a lot of details with my clients, some trusted me more while some decide to MIA after the 1st meet up. How do you know I didn't think from my clients shoes and helping them to understand the crucial details rather than flashing attractive marketing features?
Please click "like" and follow me on Money Mind for new daily advice. Thank you.

3. Think of how to package a product if you are the agent who sold the guy's dad the policy, including the riders whether for his own good or for your commission, with or without him knowing the product details.
The whole product could have been easily packaged as:
"This plan every month is $100 only... you can save the money for your kids study next time, 23 yrs later you can get back x% of interest. Somemore ah I tell you, if anything happen to you to you right, you also no need worry.. because why? you are covered for $Y0,000. Good right?"

In fact every word was phrased out correctly, every word was true. But it was just half-truths.
Anyway, those is just my assumption. Case is 20+ years ago, I don't know how agent sell in those days apart from giving umbrella and pen as free gift.
You wan to dig also go find those old and experienced NTUC agents to dig, there's none in the forum.

Salesman job is to make a client happy, not to be ethical. If you want ethical and valuable advice, come find me instead.

But agents are salesman what...


What talking you??

 

[SBC]

MAS & CASE need to do their part as governance. Else these providers will take advantages of it.