Builders risk insurance is an exclusive kind of property insurance that provides coverage against any kind of damage to buildings that are under construction. During construction, the building that is being built is exposed to many kinds of risks that can result in heavy loss. The building can be adversely affected due calamities or accidents therefore it is very important to get it insured.
As most of the times builders or building contractors are held liable for any kind loss that occurs or happens during the construction, it becomes the responsibility of the builders to protect themselves by taking benefit of schemes like Builders risk insurance. Builders risk insurance usually provides coverage against losses that are caused because of fire, vandalism, lightning, wind, and other such forces.
Builders risk insurance of insurance provides no coverage against damage that occurs due to natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, tsunami, hurricanes, typhoons, tornados, cyclones, seismic activities, etc. This type of insurance also does not provide any type of protection against losses that are caused due to acts of war, or intentional acts of the owner. The maturity period of Builders risk insurance is limited to the construction phase only.
Builders risk insurance is usually taken by builders, building contractors, and property owners. It is totally depend on the construction contract and ownership of the property that who should buy the Builders risk insurance to get maximum benefit out of it. It is advisable for the people who planning a new construction on their property or thinking of renovating the existing structures for improvement must purchase a Builders risk insurance policy.
Although, buying a builders risk insurance policy is a little complicated in comparison to the regular property insurance policy. It is recommended to gain proper knowledge before making the decision to get a deal that provides maximum benefit at minimum cost. The best way to get the best deal is to compare insurance quotes of the top listed insurance companies. You can also take an insurance brokers or insurance agents advice to gain proper information on the latest insurance schemes available.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Cheap Car Insurance Quotes Online Can Be Compared
Car insurances are quite tricky, if they have not been researched. Anyone who buys a car will have to do some research for these quotes before deciding which one to buy. Cheap car insurances quotes online will save the users a lot of time, and they may benefit from these online quotes. They will be able to save a lot of money too, as they will get the best quotes without being biased.Various
Communism - theory and practice
Source: Wikipedia
Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human society, which would be achieved through a proletarian revolution and only becoming possible only after a socialist stage develops the productive forces, leading to a superabundance of goods and services.
"Pure communism" in the Marxian sense refers to a classless, stateless and oppression-free society where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made democratically, allowing every member of society to participate in the decision-making process in both the political and economic spheres of life.
In modern usage, communism is often used to refer to Bolshevism or Marxism-Leninism and the policies of the various communist states which had government ownership of all the means of production and centrally planned economies. Communist regimes have historically been authoritarian, repressive, and coercive governments concerned primarily with preserving their own power.
As a political ideology, communism is usually considered to be a branch of socialism; a broad group of economic and political philosophies that draw on the various political and intellectual movements with origins in the work of theorists of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution.[6] Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems with the capitalist market economy and the legacy of imperialism and nationalism.
Marx states that the only way to solve these problems is for the working class (proletariat), who according to Marx are the main producers of wealth in society and are exploited by the Capitalist-class (bourgeoisie), to replace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class in order to establish a free society, without class or racial divisions. The dominant forms of communism, such as Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism are based on Marxism, but non-Marxist versions of communism (such as Christian communism and anarcho-communism) also exist.
Karl Marx never provided a detailed description as to how communism would function as an economic system, but it is understood that a communist economy would consist of common ownership of the means of production, culminating in the negation of the concept of private ownership of capital, which referred to the means of production in Marxian terminology.
Misleading arguments by life insurance agents
Life insurance agents are trained to present strong arguments to get the unsavvy public to buy life and investment-linked policies that pay high commission to the agents. Here are some of the arguments put forward by them against term insurance:
a) Term insurance is for a certain period. After the period is over, you will not have any more life insurance cover.
b) Term insurance covers a fixed sum, which does not keep up with inflation.
These arguments are misleading and do not present an honest picture. Here are the reasons:
a) You only need life insurance cover when your children still depend on you financially. After 25 years, they have grown up. During this period, you would have accumulated sufficient savings to surpass the sum insured and will not need life insurance any more.
b) If your term insurance covers a level sum, the accumulated savings will be more than adequate to compensate for the effect of inflation. Actually, a decreasing sum insured may be adequate for most people.
The greatest danger of inflation is not on the death benefit, but on the savings in a life insurance policy. A net yield of 2% provided by a life insurance policy is not sufficient to cover inflation. It is important for a policyholder to invest the savings more wisely to get a higher return (say 4% or more) to cover inflation. A life insurance policy does not provide a fair return, due to the high charges for commission and profit.
Many agents know the facts, but they are dishonest in presenting misleading arguments, in the chase for the lucrative commission.
Tan Kin Lian
a) Term insurance is for a certain period. After the period is over, you will not have any more life insurance cover.
b) Term insurance covers a fixed sum, which does not keep up with inflation.
These arguments are misleading and do not present an honest picture. Here are the reasons:
a) You only need life insurance cover when your children still depend on you financially. After 25 years, they have grown up. During this period, you would have accumulated sufficient savings to surpass the sum insured and will not need life insurance any more.
b) If your term insurance covers a level sum, the accumulated savings will be more than adequate to compensate for the effect of inflation. Actually, a decreasing sum insured may be adequate for most people.
The greatest danger of inflation is not on the death benefit, but on the savings in a life insurance policy. A net yield of 2% provided by a life insurance policy is not sufficient to cover inflation. It is important for a policyholder to invest the savings more wisely to get a higher return (say 4% or more) to cover inflation. A life insurance policy does not provide a fair return, due to the high charges for commission and profit.
Many agents know the facts, but they are dishonest in presenting misleading arguments, in the chase for the lucrative commission.
Tan Kin Lian
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Watch out for signs of a bad financial adviser
Dear Mr. Tan,
I am a fan of your blog. It is very informative and has tons of information.
Sometime this year,I started to watch a show on CNBC called "The Suze Orman Show".
Although it is targeted at American, I think some sections work for foreigners as well. Recently,she made a list of warning signs of a bad financial advisor and below is the website: http://www.cnbc.com/id/33914402?slide=1
I am a fan of your blog. It is very informative and has tons of information.
Sometime this year,I started to watch a show on CNBC called "The Suze Orman Show".
Although it is targeted at American, I think some sections work for foreigners as well. Recently,she made a list of warning signs of a bad financial advisor and below is the website: http://www.cnbc.com/id/33914402?slide=1
Review of existing life policy
A young person sought my advice on her life insurance policy. Her father bought the policy for her many years ago and now wished to transfer the policy to her. The cash value is lower than the total premiums that were paid. She asked for my advice on whether to continue or terminate the policy. She asked the insurance company to give a projection of the future cash value, but they declined, citing that the future bonus is uncertain.
I advised her as follows:
a) Ask for the projected cash value for each of the next 10 years, based on the guidelines given in this FAQ.
b) Insist on getting a projection of the cash value, even though some part of the projected value is not guaranteed
c) To pass the projection to me, for a review.
It is the duty of the insurance company to give the requested information, so that the customer can review the existing policy and see if it is appropriate to continue the policy. I will ask a volunteer in FISCA to carry out the review for future cases, after the process has been establised.
I advised her as follows:
a) Ask for the projected cash value for each of the next 10 years, based on the guidelines given in this FAQ.
b) Insist on getting a projection of the cash value, even though some part of the projected value is not guaranteed
c) To pass the projection to me, for a review.
It is the duty of the insurance company to give the requested information, so that the customer can review the existing policy and see if it is appropriate to continue the policy. I will ask a volunteer in FISCA to carry out the review for future cases, after the process has been establised.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
SCMP:Objections to new rules on minibonds look flimsy
23 November 2009
Hong Kong's banks are preparing to fight back against new regulations proposed following the Lehman minibond fiasco.
But although the forces at their disposal are impressive, their tactical position looks weak.
Towards the end of September, the Securities and Futures Commission published its proposals for stricter rules to govern the sale of unlisted structured products to the investing public. Interested parties have until the end of next month to comment.
Most of the proposed rule changes look eminently sensible. For example, the SFC wants to tighten up advertising standards. It wants to ban banks from offering "free gifts" to their customers as inducements to invest. And it plans to force banks to let buyers know if the value of their investment subsequently plunges because of adverse market conditions.
That all sounds reasonable enough, as does the SFC's suggestion that banks should check to see if their customers understand the products they are buying.
But two of the SFC's proposals in particular have raised hackles among Hong Kong's smaller banks: that they should be required to disclose exactly how much commission they stand to earn from the sale of each product, and that they should grant customers a minimum "cooling off" period after buying an investment in which they can change their minds.
Although it is still early days for the consultation period, Hong Kong's banks are already pushing back against the proposed rule changes, complaining that they are unfair, overly complicated and too expensive to implement.
Resistance to commission disclosure is coming from three angles. First, some banks are complaining that full disclosure would enable investors to shop around for the best deal. That, they fear, could lead to unhealthy competition, with banks attempting to undercut each other in order to win business, which they say would erode profits and undermine the stability of the banking system.
The second argument against disclosure is that it would unfairly tilt the investment playing field against banks and in favour of insurance companies, which are under no such obligation to come clean about their own commissions.
The final objection to commission disclosure is that it is simply too difficult. Where banks both structure and sell investment products, the banks claim it is impossible to separate income attributable to the structuring process from value added by the sales force. As a result, they say, they can't disclose their earnings from product sales.
Similarly, the banking sector is raising two major objections to the proposal for a cooling-off period, which is designed to protect impressionable investors against high-pressure sales techniques.
First the banks say the proposal would introduce a perilous element of moral hazard into investment decisions by allowing customers to back out of purchases if the market moves against them or if they decide they can get a better offer elsewhere.
Second, the banks argue that if they buy structured products back from their clients, they will be forced to unwind their hedges in the underlying instruments, which in illiquid markets is likely to be both a lengthy and prohibitively expensive process.
On examination, these objections look unconvincing. On commission disclosure, it is ludicrous to argue that improved transparency could cause unhealthy competition. Heightened competition would only benefit the customer, which is a very healthy thing.
Similarly, complaints that requiring banks to disclose their fees and commissions would unfairly penalise them relative to insurance companies don't stand up. Insurers will face the same requirement under the government's new regulator for the sector.
And contrary to what the banks say, deciding what proportion of income is attributable to origination and what to sales is straightforward. Banks should already do it internally on their departmental profit and loss accounts. If they don't, it is simple enough to determine, based on the commissions paid to third-party distributors.
Objections to the proposed cooling-off period look equally flimsy. If they want to back out, investors will have to pay an administration fee, so there will be little question of moral hazard. And complaints about the difficulty of unwinding hedges are nonsense.
Any cooling-off period is only going to be a matter of days, so it is highly unlikely the banks would actually invest the money raised from a structured product offer until the cooling-off window had closed.
In reality, the banks are opposed to greater transparency because it would reveal internal conflicts of interest.
If a bank salesman were pushing one investment product particularly aggressively compared with another, customers would only have to check which one would pay the more lucrative commission rate to find out whether the salesman was acting in their interest or solely in his own.
And the banks object to the cooling-off period idea simply because they are afraid that on sober reflection without a salesman breathing down their neck, customers may change their minds about buying structured products like minibonds and demand their money back. That would force the banks to surrender their commission income, something they are extremely reluctant to do.
As a result, the banks are preparing to fight back, mobilising their forces to resist the proposed rule changes. Whether they succeed or not will say a great deal about the state of investor protection in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong's banks are preparing to fight back against new regulations proposed following the Lehman minibond fiasco.
But although the forces at their disposal are impressive, their tactical position looks weak.
Towards the end of September, the Securities and Futures Commission published its proposals for stricter rules to govern the sale of unlisted structured products to the investing public. Interested parties have until the end of next month to comment.
Most of the proposed rule changes look eminently sensible. For example, the SFC wants to tighten up advertising standards. It wants to ban banks from offering "free gifts" to their customers as inducements to invest. And it plans to force banks to let buyers know if the value of their investment subsequently plunges because of adverse market conditions.
That all sounds reasonable enough, as does the SFC's suggestion that banks should check to see if their customers understand the products they are buying.
But two of the SFC's proposals in particular have raised hackles among Hong Kong's smaller banks: that they should be required to disclose exactly how much commission they stand to earn from the sale of each product, and that they should grant customers a minimum "cooling off" period after buying an investment in which they can change their minds.
Although it is still early days for the consultation period, Hong Kong's banks are already pushing back against the proposed rule changes, complaining that they are unfair, overly complicated and too expensive to implement.
Resistance to commission disclosure is coming from three angles. First, some banks are complaining that full disclosure would enable investors to shop around for the best deal. That, they fear, could lead to unhealthy competition, with banks attempting to undercut each other in order to win business, which they say would erode profits and undermine the stability of the banking system.
The second argument against disclosure is that it would unfairly tilt the investment playing field against banks and in favour of insurance companies, which are under no such obligation to come clean about their own commissions.
The final objection to commission disclosure is that it is simply too difficult. Where banks both structure and sell investment products, the banks claim it is impossible to separate income attributable to the structuring process from value added by the sales force. As a result, they say, they can't disclose their earnings from product sales.
Similarly, the banking sector is raising two major objections to the proposal for a cooling-off period, which is designed to protect impressionable investors against high-pressure sales techniques.
First the banks say the proposal would introduce a perilous element of moral hazard into investment decisions by allowing customers to back out of purchases if the market moves against them or if they decide they can get a better offer elsewhere.
Second, the banks argue that if they buy structured products back from their clients, they will be forced to unwind their hedges in the underlying instruments, which in illiquid markets is likely to be both a lengthy and prohibitively expensive process.
On examination, these objections look unconvincing. On commission disclosure, it is ludicrous to argue that improved transparency could cause unhealthy competition. Heightened competition would only benefit the customer, which is a very healthy thing.
Similarly, complaints that requiring banks to disclose their fees and commissions would unfairly penalise them relative to insurance companies don't stand up. Insurers will face the same requirement under the government's new regulator for the sector.
And contrary to what the banks say, deciding what proportion of income is attributable to origination and what to sales is straightforward. Banks should already do it internally on their departmental profit and loss accounts. If they don't, it is simple enough to determine, based on the commissions paid to third-party distributors.
Objections to the proposed cooling-off period look equally flimsy. If they want to back out, investors will have to pay an administration fee, so there will be little question of moral hazard. And complaints about the difficulty of unwinding hedges are nonsense.
Any cooling-off period is only going to be a matter of days, so it is highly unlikely the banks would actually invest the money raised from a structured product offer until the cooling-off window had closed.
In reality, the banks are opposed to greater transparency because it would reveal internal conflicts of interest.
If a bank salesman were pushing one investment product particularly aggressively compared with another, customers would only have to check which one would pay the more lucrative commission rate to find out whether the salesman was acting in their interest or solely in his own.
And the banks object to the cooling-off period idea simply because they are afraid that on sober reflection without a salesman breathing down their neck, customers may change their minds about buying structured products like minibonds and demand their money back. That would force the banks to surrender their commission income, something they are extremely reluctant to do.
As a result, the banks are preparing to fight back, mobilising their forces to resist the proposed rule changes. Whether they succeed or not will say a great deal about the state of investor protection in Hong Kong.
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