HK: Relief appears to be near for Lehman minibond holders.

There are sufficient grounds for disciplinary action against some bank staff accused of misselling the minibonds, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

And market sources say the Securities and Futures Commission is pushing big banks to follow in the footsteps of Sun Hung Kai Investment and settle with disgruntled customers.

HKMA executive director Raymond Li said yesterday that "a few cases are already at a very advanced stage of investigation,'' he said adding, "Should any case be concluded we would definitely tell the public."

According to procedures, anyone accused of misselling will have at least 30 days to make a representation and another 21 days to appeal if their explanations are rejected before their case goes public. As of yesterday, the HKMA had got 20,642 complaints, and 20,443 had cleared initial assessment.

So far, files have been opened for just 5,772 cases, of which 4,178 have gone through a preliminary investigation. Only 418 complaints relating to 16 banks were referred to the SFC.

Li blamed the slow progress on the reluctance of complainants to provide useful information in most of the cases.

But he reiterated that the authority will complete investigating at least 70 percent of complaints by March 2010.

"We are recruiting more staff both part-time and those on secondment to accelerate the process," he said. About 200 staff will be involved.

Li said a client's interest was the HKMA's priority, and if a settlement without punishment was the best solution it would get the authority's support.

The Whole Truth

Dear Mr. Tan,

Some people play with words to an extent that it is difficult to know the difference between the truth and lies.

If a business reduce the benefit significantly last year, can they now say that the action has benefited the customers, because they do not need to reduce the benefit further this year?

Similarly, can the government, after increasing tax and levy,  now give a smal rebate and say that they are benefitting the taxpayer with the rebate?

REPLY

I agree with your view. It is now quite difficult to tell the difference between honesty and dishonesty. Mr. S Rajaratnam once said that there are difference between "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". We have to learn what is the "whole truth".

Submitting Income Taxi by e-Filing

I submitted my income tax returns for 2008 by e-filing.

IRAS has designed a sophisticated and expensive computer system for e-filing. It must have cost a lot of money. It was supposed to make e-filing easy for the tax-payer.

Unfortunately, it was very difficult - even for an internet savvy person like me. Why? It is a matter of mindset. The experts in IRAS designed a system that is convenient for them. They forget to make it convenient for the ordinary people.

What is a system that is convenient for ordinary people? Just provide a simple form to ask me to submit the details of my income and claim. Use a format that is convenient for the tax payer to fill in - not a format that is convenient for IRAS to do their workflow.

But, I have to commend IRAS for one excellent aspect of the system. They display the information that they have, taken from various sources, that are relevant for my tax computation. This includes my chartiable donations and topping up of CPF account for family members. I appreciate it very much. 

I hope that IRAS will take my suggestion about making it easy for me to submit their annual return, especially for items that are not captured by IRAS.

Tan Kin Lian

Additional comments

It is easy to use e-filing, if you do not need to provide additional sources of income or other charges. However, it is quite troublesome to provide the additional information, for example on property, life insurance policies and deductions, as they are designed to be helpful to IRAS and not customer friendly. It is also difficult to search for the right places to provide the information, as they are placed all over several web pages and tabs.

Buy Term Insurance

Dear Mr. Tan,
May I know which company you'd recommend for buying "Term", "Decreasing Term" and "Living Benefit" policies you described in your FAQ: http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/choice.html

REPLY
You can buy Term insurance from NTUC Income (they call it i-Term). But do not allow them to convince you to buy other life insurance policies.

You can also buy i-Term from Philips Securities. They sell i-Term offered by NTUC Income. You can find out from their website. All the best!

Relief loan is similar to early withdrawal from CPF

I have proposed that retrenched workers should be allowed to take a relief loan, offered by a Government agency,  at an interest rate of 2.5% per annum. This should also be available to workers who suffered a drop of earnings due to a reduction in working hours.

This relief loan is similar to an unemployment benefit, but has to be repaid in the future. Interest on the loan can be accumulated with the principal. The borrower has the incentive to repay the loan earlier, to avoid incurring interest charges.

My proposal is similar to early withdrawal from the CPF. The loan incurs interest charge of 2.5%, which is similar to the interest earned on CPF savings.  There is no additional cost to the borrower under my proposed relief loan scheme.

My proposal is intended to protect the integrity of the CPF as a saving plan for retirement.  There is a reminder on the borrower to repay the relief loan. However, if the loan is not repaid, it will be repaid from the CPF savings at the time of its withdrawal.

My proposal will also offer relief to the retrenched worker in the case where there is no CPF savings to withdraw from, e.g. where the savings have been fully used to buy a property.

Tan Kin Lian

Ready Pool of Part Time Workers

To employers. There is a ready pool of part time workers. They are willing to work for $6 to $9 per hour. You can choose a worker that stays near your place of business, and likes the type of work that you do. Go to this portal. 

Click on employer. Sign up and select your workers. You can send a SMS for them to call you.

Intelligence Quiz

You can buy my book at $7.90 at the bookstores mentinoned in this website.

You can also view other applciations here.