Saturday, February 5, 2011

Driving Without A Licence | Driving Without Insurance | BusinessAndLegal.ie

This offence will also lead to 5 penalty points for you and even if it is your first offence and the court uses it’s discretion not to impose a disqualification you will still get the 5 penalty points on your licence.

It is worth noting that once a Garda asks you for production of your insurance certificate and you fail to do so, the evidential burden of proof shifts to you to prove that you had insurance in place at the time of the alleged offence.
This is part of the road traffic offences series.

CPFTA now applies to financial services

The Consumer Protection and Fair Trading Act now applies to financial services. I urge consumers, who have been misled into bad investment products, to prepare your case to lodge a complaint under the CPFTA. The fact that you have signed a form does not absolve the financial adviser or the financial institution from their culpability under the CPFTA of misleading the consumer.

Read this FAQ carefully to see which category of wrongdoing the act or negligence may fall under: http://tankinlian.com/admin/file.aspx?id=384

I also wish to ask lawyers to come forward and help to take some of these cases on behalf of consumers. Please charge modest fees as the consumer is not able to pay high fees. You may get a chance to make a name for your firm as doing good for consumers and for society. If you are interested, send an email to kinlian@gmail.com.

Tan Kin Lian

Dishonest financial advisers and culpable insurance companies

I encountered the following two cases recently.

Case One. A consumer was advised by the adviser to invest a single premium of $50,000 as an investment in a life insurance policy, on the promise that it could give a better return than interest rate on CPF. She was not well educated or savvy. She was sold a annual premium policy with an annual premium of $50,000. When the second premium became due, she asked the adviser to explain why she had to pay another $50,000. He told her to ignore the request for the payment. The consumer learned later that there was a large deduction from the accumulated savings, which became clear only after one year. She complained to the insurance company. She had to go for interviews and encountered a lot of delays. I understand that the case has still not been solved.

Case Two. A foreigner, working in Singapore, was sold a life insurance policy on the misrepresentation that it was an investment product. The monthly premium was $3,500. She discovered to her horror, that 5% of the premium was deducted every month from the savings after 18 months. The financial adviser deliberately lied to her that the deduction was only 0.7% (which must be the fund management fee). The other deduction, to pay the distribution cost, was hidden from the consumer, who had asked about it.  The consumer asked for my advice on what she can do now to recover her loss. I asked her to write to the newspapers.

In both cases, I have used "she" to refer to the consumer and "he" to refer to the adviser. This may not be the real genders in the actual cases.

The culpability does not lie with the financial advisers alone. They also extend to the insurance companies that designed the products to levy a high upfront charge and hide the charge from the consumers. This allowed the dishonest agents to mislead the unwary consumers.

Tan Kin Lian

Are all financial advisers bad?

Are all financial advisers bad? The truth is - they belong to different categories.

Some financial advisers are honest, and do take care of the best interest of their clients. Some are crooks who knowingly tell outright lies and half lies to con their consumers. The majority fall in between, i.e they think that, having put in the effort to achieve the insurance qualifications,  it is only right that they should make a living by doing what they are trained to do. Many are not aware that the products give a poor deal to the consumers - some know but do not really care - they have to make a living.

There are quite a few financial advisers who are outright crooks. Some consumers who were conned by them have sought my assistance. These crooks are able to carry out their misdeeds with impunity. When the consumer complained to the insurance company, they received excuses and encountered delays. Some consumers give up trying to lodge the complaint.

It is this bad situation that prompted me to advice consumers to avoid all financial advisers. It is difficult for an unwary consumer to tell an honest financial adviser from a crook. They are likely to be give a bad product anyway, even from the advisers who may not be acting dishonestly.

Singapore had been following the practice of UK and Australia in the regulation of life insurance sales. The regulators adopted the approach of requiring the financial advisers to act honorably and professionally - whatever that means. UK and Australis have decided to abandon the professionalism approach and have taken the drastic step of banning the payment of commission on life insurance products. They found that it is impossible to manage the conflict of interest.

Some financial advisers do not like my message and have resorted to making personal attack against me in other blogs. They claimed that, when I was in NTUC Income, I had been using agents to sell life insurance products. These people are either ignorant or malicious in distorting the truth. They should know that the commissions paid to the insurance agents in NTUC income during my time were much lower than the market rates and the insurance products offered fair value to consumers. This is how despicable the crooked financial advisers can be.

Tan Kin Lian

Family Life 1.1

A new game is automatically created every hour. You can ask your friend to join and compete with you in the same game. You can watch the progress of the human players under the tab "human avatars". It is quite fun and additive. www.easysearch.sg (Family Life).

Apple iPhone and Android developers

I have several apps developed on the Windows Phone and have been tested and uploaded into the Marketplace.

I wish to look for developers to convert these apps to Apple iPhone and to Android. As the apps have been tested, it is quite easily to port over the use the code and convert them to the new platforms.

If you are interested to do the conversion, please send an e-mail to kinlian@gmail.com. We can discuss the projects and the fee.

Family Life Game #184

In game #184, I competed with Jason. His avatar got a child at age 32 and shot ahead of me in the success score. My avatar is trying to get a child soon, to catch up.
www.easysearch.sg (Family Life)