Diversifying Ruined

Isn't it amazing that a person with less than a year of experience is allowed to sell you insurance, potentially dangerous product that offers you more harm than protection? Why would any guy on the street be willing to fork out a chunk of your monthly savings to buy into these products on the advice of these salesman wealth agents?

An interesting article about the recent flood in Singapore.

ANYBODY outside of Singapore who saw photos of submerged cars, rescue workers carrying people to safety and other scenes of chaos and devastation caused by Orchard Road's mega washout on Wednesday would be forgiven for not believing their eyes. A natural disaster sweeping through Singapore? After all, a lady interviewed on TV hit the nail on the head when she disbelievingly said that she never thought something like this could happen in a first world country.

It's true that such scenes are more likely to be associated with developing countries but if you look closely enough, you would be able to see the tell-tale signs that such a disaster has taken place in Singapore. How can you tell? Easy. Just check out our list of the top 10 differences between a flash flood in a developing country and one in Orchard Road:

10: In Orchard Road, the only bodies you see floating in the water are the mannequins from Massimo Dutti.

9: Anguished men rush home to their families, crying, 'Oh my god, is the Murcielago/ Bentley/Ferrari all right?' or 'Check the cable TV reception - can we still watch the World Cup?!'

8: Singaporeans do not really know how to loot. Instead of taking whatever beauty products they can find floating in the water, they wait to see if something more valuable will float by, such as a camera or a leather iPhone cover. Other more enterprising looters will insist that rescue workers carry them to the Hermes boutique, just in case a slightly soiled Birkin floats by.

7: Rescue workers have trouble carrying out submerged patrons from Starbucks or Wendy's because they won't leave until they get a voucher for a replacement meal.

6: People are taking photos to upload on their Facebook pages.

5: Rescued victims will lodge complaints that their rescuers took their umbrellas to help other people and did not return them.

4: Firefighters have to counsel drivers still in their cars half submerged in water, muttering to themselves, 'I can make it, I can make it. . .'

3: Bystanders are watching the same drivers along the sidelines, placing bets on whether they will make it.

2: After the same drivers are finally extricated from their cars, they can be heard muttering on the side of the road, 'The weather forecasters did this. That dummy from Massimo Dutti did this.'

1: Stranded commuters insist that rescuers send them to their workplaces in their civil defence vehicles.

And so ends an exciting week in Singapore. So if you ever thought that the only interesting thing happening during this World Cup season was learning a new African word, vuvuzela, think again. Yes, it took a clogged drain in Tanglin to create this nationwide calamity, but well, the next time it happens, we'll keep you updated on the most worthwhile looting locations.

Source.

Trying comparing to this.

Dear Mr. Tan,
As im currently a new agent with one of the big insurance companies in Singapore, im finding its a lot different from what I was told or expected.
For example at the start we were told to emphasize needs based selling in order to meet the needs of our clients (basically what the MAS regulations said). Later I found out that nobody does needs based selling and all we do is get clients to sign on empty forms so we can go back to the office to fill them up later. End result : Client is clueless about what their needs are and how we are meeting them, if at all. Instead of talking to them about what THEY want, we spend our time giving presentations about interest rates and talking about how our relative racked up a huge hospital bill without insurance to pay for it.

The commission structure is also highly flawed and contributes to the high turnover rate of agents in the industry. There is absolutely zero incentive or point for agents to recommend products with lower commission rates. In fact, meeting a client to sell a term plan actually loses an agent money(unless it is a very big term plan) because the commission rate is simply not high enough to pay for the time + bus/MRT fare involved.

In my case, neither I or my colleagues were ever given product training on anything but the products with the highest commission rates. Also, this is actually a job that requires you to spend money in order to make money. The problem is that for most new agents, they will not be able to set sufficient appointments or close enough cases to make money for the first 1-2 months at least, unless they have a lot of contacts who are interested. The end result is they spend hundreds of dollars in food and transport expenses, and in the end all they keep hearing is “I’m not interested”, and quit because they are heavily in the red and still can’t find people who wants to buy insurance. It would be better if new agents were given a basic allowance of $400-500 for living expenses till they are seasoned enough to close cases on a regular basis.

With the high turnover rate of agents in the industry there is a high incentive to simply not train agents properly since a manager is spending too much time training someone who, according to statistics, will quit in a month or two anyway. Simply give them basic training, send them on whatever appointments they can make, and see if it works out. If not, oh well, go recruit more people. I was given a few days of training total, only a few hours of which was product related, and was told to go to my first appointment with the aim to do a presentation and simply convince him to buy and not ask questions. I ended up making stuff up when the client started asking about things I was not taught about. I felt pathetic.

As it is I am currently in the unenviable situation where I spend money travelling back and fro my office, making phone calls, doing surveys, doing coldcalls, mainly to hear phones ringing that people never seem to pick up (I never had any idea how under-utilzied handphones were in Singapore before) and I am not even able to set a single appointment because people keep postponing or simply dissapear off the radar and never pick up their phones again. All of this is costing me money and worst of all I cannot see a way to improve my situation. I do not have any senior agents I can look to for guidance since they are all busy rushing to meet quotas and my manager just keeps telling me to go out, do more surveys, make more phone calls, find and meet people, etc, but it is simply not working.

I have no clue where, exactly, I am supposed to find people interested in buying insurance or doing investments since almost everyone i meet simply recoils in horror at the mere mention of “savings” “investments” “protection” or any other key word that you can possibly use.

A scary amount of middle aged adults still believe themselves immortal and that they cannot possibly get hospitalized or worse, affecting their ability to provide for their family. Most young working adults simply go from paycheck to paycheck, saving $0 every month and heading straight for disaster the moment a situation calls for usage of emergency funds which do not exist, or they just dump a token amount into their bank account every month that dissapears into the newest xbox or ipod the moment they get enough. Most young working adults do not even have a clue what medishield or medisave is, other than that it is something CPF related.

I feel like im constantly rolling dice and seeing if I can get a lucky combination just to find a single interested person. I would like to continue on in this line of advising people on financial planning, but I do not see how as most people simply want to go through life without any financial planning or insurance protection at all. And actually I don’t even know whether what im doing can be considered financial planning anyway.

Source.

This is a very typical but unheard of voices among the insurance agents in Singapore where the commission structure present a conflict of interest. Its an open secret only to the minority who belongs to the financial savvy group. We often heard of people having no time to do their own research and planning, hence they just leave it to the financial planners thinking they have the knowledge and skills necessary. This might be true but in reality, it is hardly the case if the adviser is skewed towards making enough money just to put food on the table. In this scenario, they would be more likely to recommend products (Whole Life, Endowment, ILP etc) that are not in your interest because the commissions are huge; imagine 90% of your first year premium goes to the pretty/handsome adviser.

My advise is to at least read up what insurance you might need and ask your adviser for comments. I favored IFA (Independent financial adviser) over tied-agents as the former has more sources; however whether he/she has the expertise to filter out the bad ones is subject to individual.

By Cheng Huang Leng

Four Pre-Conditions for Retirement

I retired in year 2000 at age 52. I am now 61, thus I can claim that I got more experience at retirement than most! I thought I should share my experience with mariners because I have seen too many friends and neighbours who became so bored that they have become a nuisance to their spouse and children and to others!

A few of them have solved the problem by going back to work. They were able to do so because they have a skill/expertise that is still in demand. The rest (and many are my neighbours) live aimlessly or are waiting to die – a very sad situation, indeed.

You can retire only when you fulfil these 4 pre-conditions:

1. Your children are financially independent (e.g. they got jobs),
2. You have zero liability (all your borrowings are paid up),
3. You have enough savings to support your lifestyle for the rest of your life,
AND most importantly,
4. You know what you would be doing during your retirement.

DO NOT retire till you meet ALL 4 Pre-Conditions. And of course you should not retire if you enjoy working and are getting paid for it!

The problem cases I know of are those who failed to meet Pre-Condition #4.

When asked, “What would you be doing during your retirement?” some replied, “I will travel/cruise and see the World”. They did that, some for 3 months and then ran out of ideas. The golfers replied, “I can golf every day.” Most could not because they are no longer fit to play well enough to enjoy the game. Those who could, need to overcome another hurdle - they need to the find the “kakis” to play with them.

It’s the same with mahjong, bridge, badminton, trekking and karaoke – you need “kakis”! Most could not find others who share their favourite game and playing/singing alone is no fun. AND when they do find them, a few of them found that they are NOT welcomed like my obnoxious neighbour whom everyone avoids.

Thus if you are into group sports or games, you must form your groups BEFORE you retire. You need to identify your “kakis”, play with them and discover whether they “click” with you.

The less sporty “can read all the books bought over the years”. I know of one guy who fell asleep after a few pages and ended up napping most of the time! He discovered that he did not like to read after all. We do change and we may not enjoy the hobbies we had.

Routine Activities To Fill Your Week

For most people, your routine work activities are planned for you or dictated by others and circumstances. When you retire, you wake up to a new routine – one that you yourself have to establish as nobody else would do it for you!

The routine to establish should keep your body, mind and spirit “sharpened”. A good routine would comprise:

a) One weekly physical sport – you need to keep fit to enjoy your retirement. If you are the non-sporty type, you should fire your maid and clean your home without mechanical aids. Dancing and baby sitting are good alternatives.

b) One weekly mind stimulating activity – e.g. writing, studying for a degree, acquiring a new skill, solving problems or puzzles, learn or teach something. You need to stimulate your mind to stay alive because the day you stop using your brain is the day you start to die.

c) One weekly social activity – choose one involving lots of friends/neighbours. Get yourself accepted as a member to at least 3 interests groups. Unless you prefer to be alone, you do need friends more than ever as you get older and less fit to pursue your sport.

d) One weekly community service activity – you need to give to appreciate what you have taken in this life. It’s good to leave some kind of legacy.

With 4 weekly activities, you got 4 days out of 7 covered. The remaining 3 days should be devoted to family related activities. In this way, you maintain a balance between amusing yourself and your family members. Any spare time should remain “spare” so that you can capitalise on opportunities that come your way like responding to an unexpected request to do a job or to take advantage of cheap fares to see places or to visit an exhibition.

Mind stimulating activities

Most judges live to a ripe old age. They use their brains a lot to decide on cases. I am sure MM Lee’s brain works overtime. He’s 80+ and still going strong. In “Today” you would have read of 2 inspiring oldies. One is a granny who learned to play the guitar at age 60 to entertain his grandchildren. She’s 70+ today and those grandchildren have grown to play with her. Another is an Indian radiologist who on retirement, qualified as an acupuncturist. He’s age 77 and still offers his services (by appointment only) including free ones to those who have no income. I guarantee you that they are happy people who discovered a “2nd wind” to take them to the sunset with a smile on their faces.

Mind stimulating activities are hard to identify. They require your will to do something useful with the rest of your life, a mindset change and the discipline to carry it through.

Your Bucket List

Despite your busy routine, you will at times be bored. Then it’s time to turn to your Bucket List.

Your bucket list contains a list of things to do before you kick the bucket. They are not routine and are usually one off activities. You need them to have something to look forward to. These include anniversaries, trips (and pilgrimages), visits to friends and relations abroad, re-doing your home, attending conferences (related to your hobbies), acquiring a new set of expertise. 4 such activities that are spaced our quarterly would be ideal.

Retirement Is A Serious Business

If you can afford to retire and want to, do prepare to live to your fullest. You need to be fit to enjoy it – therefore get into shape now. You do not want to get up on a Monday and wonder what to do each week, therefore identify your set of weekly routine activities now and try them out to confirm that they are the activities that you will be looking forward to doing each week, week after week. You bucket list of “rewards” or “projects” or “challenges” is needed to help you break away from the routine thereby make live worth living. Start listing what you fancy and refine it as you chug along in your retirement. You will have so much fun, you would wish you were retired since your turned 21!

I will be happy to share my personal retirement experience with mariners. Just write to me.

Cheng Huang Leng
chenghuangleng@gmail.com

Last month Starhub made an announcement that they will be upgrading their cable to improve overseas speed, more notably mentioning that Youtube's speed will be improved at least 30-40% if I remembered correctly. In addition, they also mentioned that the speed will be "felt" in Jan 2010. Unfortunately, almost the whole of Jan has passed and I have not experience any improvement yet.

My MOL Express Plus contract will be up in March and if by then things doesn't improve, I will most probably cross the river to join the red army (Not the Thaksin camp!!).

(KUALA LUMPUR) The 20-litre fuel cap on foreign vehicles travelling within a 50-kilometre radius from the border will be implemented today, Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said.

He said the ruling was aimed at checking smuggling of petrol and diesel at border areas until a new mechanism on fuel subsidy was implemented in May next year.

EXTRAORDINARY occasions call for exceptional responses. While The Business Times usually reaches its readers six days a week, from Monday to Saturday, it will produce a special package for them this Sunday.

In light of the ongoing Apec meet, and given that Saturday promises to be a particularly exciting and news-filled day, BT will put together an 8-page special that will be distributed free with this week's issue of The New Paper on Sunday.

Remember to pick it up.

IN Singapore, more than 600 million pages of bills and envelopes are sent out to households, costing billing companies more than $50 million annually.

As expected, these usually end up in the waste bin or thrown into a pile of already-viewed bills. Studies show that only 5 per cent of Singaporeans have switched to checking their bills electronically. The rest receive their bills the conventional way by post.

However, with the public growing more tech-savvy and environmentally conscious, this trend may change soon.

For years, organisations have been grappling with the cost of sending paper bills to their customers, especially for those who bill on a regular basis such as telcos, utility companies and banks.

While each paper bill's cost ranges from 70 cents to $2.65, the total runs into millions spent each year after factoring in the cost of paper, printing, postage, equipment and labour.

Because of this, some companies have introduced online portals, allowing users to assess bills electronically. Unfortunately, the rate of adoption by the Singapore public has been low, which is surprising considering more than 80 per cent use the Internet for day-to-day transactions.

Why is this so? Firstly, each company has its own online portal, which customers must log in to retrieve their bill information. As most households receive at least five to 10 bills a month, it takes considerable time and patience to log into different portals, and remember separate login IDs and passwords, especially when the billing cycles are different.

Another factor is human nature. It is always difficult to convince people to change from what they are comfortable with, especially when the existing system remains in place. Furthermore, companies do not actively encourage their customers to opt out of receiving paper bills.

What many do not realise is the potential of deploying such a system. Even if just a fifth of Internet users were to view their bills electronically, this would translate to saving 134 million pages and 16,000 trees annually. As paper bills are widely used not only in B2C business segments but also in B2B markets, online portals have the potential of reaching out and catering to the needs of these segments.

Seeing the commercial potential and societal benefits of electronic bills, one start-up company is developing a solution to solve these problems. Supported by NUS Enterprise, GreenBills Pte Ltd has built a common platform, which aggregates bills from different companies.

Called GreenPost, this platform allows users to view their bills through a single online portal. It aggregates bills from M1, SingTel, StarHub and Singapore Power. GreenBills is also developing a 'paper opt out' mechanism, so users can choose the environmentally friendly option of saving paper once they are comfortable with viewing bills online. Other benefits of the portal include email alerts for new bills or overdue payments, downloadable PDF-version bills and unlimited archival of bills.

More.

Ash tray anyone?

Buyers of life assurance, accident or health policies can nominate their beneficiaries under the Insurance Nomination law that took effect this month.

The law finally clears up ambiguities relating to beneficiary nominations under previous legislation.

Under the new framework, policy-holders have two options in terms of nominating beneficiaries.

One is a trust nomination, through which a policy-holder has to give up all rights to the policy. Such rights can be regained only with the consent of all nominees.

The second option is a revocable nomination, in which a policy-holder retains the ability to unilaterally change, add or remove nominees.

Planet Pulse is an online company that offer surveys to consumer like us and in return, gave us "Pulses" which are exchangeable for paypal fund. Minimum needed to withdraw fund is 2500 "Pulses" which equate to USD$25.

I have around 2400 pulses now after quite some time due to zero referrals and skipping some of the survey due to lack of time. If you are interested, just sign up by clicking on the image above! Have fun.

My recent post about the Stanford PhD holder driving a taxi in Singapore has been featured in the Straits Times today. Ok, not my post that was featured, but the story of the taxi driver, Dr Cai Ming Jie.

COULD this be Singapore's most well qualified taxi driver?

Dr Cai Ming Jie became an SMRT cabby last November after spending 16 years as a researcher at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star).

His career switch has become a talking point online after he started a blog earlier this year. Alongside his experiences as a cabby, he takes issue with the circumstances of his departure from IMCB last May.

An SMRT spokesman confirmed that the former researcher is a driver with SMRT Taxis, but Dr Cai declined to add more beyond this: 'All that needs to be said is on the blog online...It should be IMCB that needs to be asked questions, if any.'

The China-born Dr Cai, who became a Singapore citizen, obtained a PhD in molecular biology from Stanford University in 1990. The Straits Times learnt that he did a two-year postdoctoral fellowship after leaving Stanford at the University of Washington, under famed genetist Professor Lee Hartwell, who won a 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology.

He joined IMCB two years later and worked as a principal investigator in the field of cell genetics up till his departure.

A spokesman for A*Star, meanwhile, said renewal of all its researchers' contracts is based on a number of factors, including the time taken to train PhD students, their performance and their contributions to the research institutes and the agency in general.

Dr Cai's work, like that of all A*Star researchers, was assessed by an external Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), which recommended his contract be terminated.

Still, in spite of the submission of countless curriculum vitaes and applications to universities, government agencies and companies since he was told he would be let go in 2007, Dr Cai failed to get a successful response.

The former researcher now drives a four-year -old Toyota Crown. 'At a time like this, the taxi business is probably the only business in Singapore that still actively recruits people,' he said.

Source.

Looks like this case is finally closed. Or is it not?

STATE coroner on Wednesday recorded a suicide verdict on the death of Nanyang Techological University (NTU) undergrad David Widjaja, who jumped from a campus block after allegedly stabbing his professor in his office with a kitchen knife..

A bloody Widjaja, 21, an Indonesian, was seen leaving the office of NTU professor Chan Kap Luk. Several witnesses who had testified earlier said they saw the student thrust himself off the bridge on March 2.

The coroner's inquiry into the engineering student's death turned up strong evidence that Mr Widjaja had been planning to kill himself - a possibility his family has repeatedly dismissed.

The inquest was told that months before he fell to his death on campus,Mr Widjaja was searching the Internet for ways to commit suicide and murder.

Text fragments gleaned from the undergraduate's laptop show he used search engine Google to look for 'a good way to commit suicide' and also the 10 most common suicide methods.

He also searched for murder methods and spent some time at a website titled How To Get Away With Murder.

Senior Staff Sergeant Joe Ng Suan Teck, who conducted a forensic examination of Mr Widjaja's black Lenovo laptop's contents, told the court that the text fragments he had extracted included Internet searches and links to websites pertaining to both suicide and murder.

His examination of the laptop also threw up what appears to be a suicide note.

The unsigned document, titled Last Words, was created on Jan 25 and left unamended.

In the note, which begins 'If this e-mail is sent, that means I am no longer in this world', the writer painted a picture of an unhappy family situation, saying he became 'hardened' and stopped crying after he turned 16. 'I just don't have any more tears for me to shed for other people.'

The writer said he 'found life much more difficult and complicated' after entering university.

Source.

Did you or any of your close friends/relatives/family members bought the structured notes few years ago and are now suffering deep paper losses?

Several investors have suggested that a petition to be sent to the Prime Minister to ask him to get the banks to offer compensation similar to Hong Kong, namely 60% now and 40% of the proceeds at maturity.

You can view/sign the petition here. Still some way to go before reaching the quota of 1000 signatures though.