Thursday, October 28, 2010

Unable to trust the agents

Dear Mr Tan,
An independent financial advisor recently reviewed the policies belong to my wife and me. She recommended us to to surrender our policies and take up her whole life policy.

Both my wife and me are not familiar with the types of policies that we had purchased. My wife took the agent's advice and surrendered her policies. I decided to learn more about insurance before I decide. However, I am still very confused on whether to surrender my policy and has decided to write in to seek your advise.

I currently hold (details of policies provided ...) I am really confused because I asked a friend who is also an agent for help. She reviewed my policy and told me not to cancel it and instead asked me to add another whole life policy costing another 4k a year!


REPLY
My general advice is never to surrender a policy to take up a new policy. Each life insurance policy is costly and each time you make a change you incur the upfront cost all over again. In fact, most life insurance policies give bad value to the policy and should not be taken up in the first place. So, if you give up an existing policy to take up a new policy, you are most likely to commit a big mistake the second time.

The financial adviser is well trained to present figures (and often in a misleading fashion) to confuse and take advantage of the consumer (who is likely to make a bad decision).

Read these two FAQs
http://tankinlian.com/admin/file.aspx?id=178
http://tankinlian.com/Admin/File.aspx?id=64