Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Understanding the technical terms

Dear Mr. Tan.

Thanks once again for helping the us, the victims.

- Can a chartered accountant understand the medical terms used by medical doctor ?
- Can a medical doctor understand the terms used by scientist ?
- Can a management guuru understand terms used by biologist ?

The answer to all these is yes or no - yes, because it is written in ABC (they could even be able to pronounce it), no for the meaning, they just cannot understand the meaning of the terms used.

So the comments "You are educated so you must be able to read the prospectus and understand it" is pure nonsense and cannot be eatablished as the proof of understanding the product because the prospectus is designed to protect the product provider and written in such a way that it is very difficult to understand, full of jargon like CDO, CDS etc. During the sales process, bonds are mentioned, but in the prospectus, the CDO and CDS appears. To lay people, it is assume,thus, that CDO and CDS are just bonds and hence the arguments start after the problem occured. A degree holder in language could be able to write an article in such a way that the articles could be explained in different meanings in different situation!

It is also very difficults when facing the personnel from the financial institution for lodging complain because they are all well prepared to use fine print in the procpectus for arguments.

One officer from a FI even change the wording of the prospectus for the argument. In the prospectus "....the product is designed for defensive investors ......" but in the newspaper the word defensive is taken out and hence declared the product is NOT LOW RISK because High Risk product are not suitable for defensive investors. How can a defensive investor knowingly agrees that the whole capital could be wiped out !!!!!

Just wonder why the authority did not discover this and take serious steps to reprimand the offender.

HS