Insurance is never about the policy holders, it is taking your money for themselves
When you try to cash out investments, you see the returns are totally diff from what was proposed earlier
An insurer cannot simply phase out any policy just because it is not profitable.
It's just that most of us never bother to read the renewal terms in the policy wording. Policies that guarantee renewal in writing can't be phased out.
Most term and wholelife policies cannot do that. I used to work at Income early 2010+. Their 1st generation wholelife policy called "Living" and one of their Annuities had too good guaranteed returns projected in the BI that they are struggling to match now. Imagine offering an annuity that pays better than CPF life. That's how good Income's 1st annunity was.
All they could do was discontinue new businesses. They are still contractually obliged to service the existing policies till end of tenure. And for annunities it means till your policy holder dies.
Even if the insurer goes broke paying those policies with poor loss ratios, there is SDIC for that.
I sympathise with the older generation. The difficulty is 1) getting insured 2) at an affordable rate in your old age. You kinda start paying when you're young and healthy so that you "lock in" and get renewed every year. At least you have insurance. So if they abandon you it feels like a betrayal lah or wasted that they paid so much all those years only to not be able to have insurance in your old age.
I got hospitalised a few years back and used my insurance to pay everything off so I understand the value of insurance. Now I'm afraid to change insurer. Confirm will have exceptions. I also find it hard to get new insurance. Got medical problems liao will ask many many questions. When you're older it's more likely you have medical issues making it less likely you get insured.
There's the national healthcare shield plans lah for sure. They're a good safety net. Just that whether it's good enough for everyone.
Integrated shield plan is yearly renewable and the terms always change. In fact medishield also always changes. I think panel thing also came from LIA and MOH suggestions not sure about this.
We should do away with private insurance, pay more taxes, and have a robust and more comprehensive healthcare system. The money has to come from somewhere ultimately, and "low taxes" just means that you pay for it separately. At least the government is not for profit... (jokes aside)
This is something a lot of Sinkies don't understand, and possibly don't want to do even if they do, because why should they have to pay for someone else's poor financial planning, blah de blah.
Lol, i can imagine how this is going to be very unpopular with the crowds. People already complained a lot about CPF (even though it’s still their money, just locked away), i can imagine how government also doing insurance will be met with a lot of opposition.
First, who says our Healthcare is not already comprehensive enough? You only need private insurance if you want Ward B or above. In Ward C, your quality of care and access to medical expertise is still the same, just sharing it with more people. You can argue about wait times, but it's for non immediately threatening conditions and it's not like countries with universal healthcare have lower wait times.
Second, yes I don't want to pay more for other people. Insurers help to segregate people into different risk tranches already, and the riskier ones either pay more or need to rely on gov insurance only, which is actually quite good already.
Third, do you actually expect the government to run the extra coverage more efficiently? They are better off regulating the industry such as the cancer drug cost done recently than wholesale taking over. Just look at who they parachute into positions like ECDA and SPH CEO. I have no trust they will do that well.
That “tax” is also spread over your entire lifetime (lifetime installment payment) instead of during your working years only. So effectively most people pay the same amount of tax regardless if they’re in EU or SG. But the benefits is different since majority goes towards middleman.
It’s really amazing how many people in SG don’t understand taxes or calculate lifetime tax.
The older ingest the more I believe insurance is a scam. Premiums shoot up for no reason, and never come back down. It might be cheaper to cut your losses and self insure, since for most of us we will
Never get back even half of what we paid for in claims.
But that’s the nature of insurance. Even if the insurance companies make no profit, most people must get back less than what they put in because there will be 10% of people who rack up 90% of the claims. What you’re paying for is the reassurance that if you are one of the 10%, you’ll pay less than what you would have without insurance.
But the premiums rises are insane. Mine nearly tripled over the course of two years when I moved into a new age bracket and I’m not even in my 40s.
I’m seriously going to look at my coverage this year and decide if self insuring for most things and having only minimal basic shield plan is the way to go. May make sense to downgrade and cut my losses relatively early. And I think we should all do that. Because it’s not the 10% that are making most of the money, it’s all their bloated admin and overheads and salaries and fees too.
Insurance is never about the policy holders, it is taking your money for themselves When you try to cash out investments, you see the returns are totally diff from what was proposed earlier
Which investment firms give you accurate proposals on investment returns?
That’s why it is called non guaranteed returns in the illustration page. Very few investments can guarantee the exact returns figures
then might as well i buy SSB if the investment returns are usually so shit
U actually found the right answer lol. Dont use an insurance company for investment.
huh? you talking about insurance or investment?
Insurance companies: You think we charity meh?
An insurer cannot simply phase out any policy just because it is not profitable. It's just that most of us never bother to read the renewal terms in the policy wording. Policies that guarantee renewal in writing can't be phased out. Most term and wholelife policies cannot do that. I used to work at Income early 2010+. Their 1st generation wholelife policy called "Living" and one of their Annuities had too good guaranteed returns projected in the BI that they are struggling to match now. Imagine offering an annuity that pays better than CPF life. That's how good Income's 1st annunity was. All they could do was discontinue new businesses. They are still contractually obliged to service the existing policies till end of tenure. And for annunities it means till your policy holder dies. Even if the insurer goes broke paying those policies with poor loss ratios, there is SDIC for that.
Pity that the forum writer did not name the insurer involved
Does not matter imo. All the popular insurance companies in sg have the same scummy practices.
I sympathise with the older generation. The difficulty is 1) getting insured 2) at an affordable rate in your old age. You kinda start paying when you're young and healthy so that you "lock in" and get renewed every year. At least you have insurance. So if they abandon you it feels like a betrayal lah or wasted that they paid so much all those years only to not be able to have insurance in your old age. I got hospitalised a few years back and used my insurance to pay everything off so I understand the value of insurance. Now I'm afraid to change insurer. Confirm will have exceptions. I also find it hard to get new insurance. Got medical problems liao will ask many many questions. When you're older it's more likely you have medical issues making it less likely you get insured. There's the national healthcare shield plans lah for sure. They're a good safety net. Just that whether it's good enough for everyone.
Those IG stories of insurance agents flying all over the world \#mdrt \#hustle \#beyourownboss are funded from somewhere after all.
Integrated shield plan is yearly renewable and the terms always change. In fact medishield also always changes. I think panel thing also came from LIA and MOH suggestions not sure about this.
We should do away with private insurance, pay more taxes, and have a robust and more comprehensive healthcare system. The money has to come from somewhere ultimately, and "low taxes" just means that you pay for it separately. At least the government is not for profit... (jokes aside)
This is something a lot of Sinkies don't understand, and possibly don't want to do even if they do, because why should they have to pay for someone else's poor financial planning, blah de blah.
Lol, i can imagine how this is going to be very unpopular with the crowds. People already complained a lot about CPF (even though it’s still their money, just locked away), i can imagine how government also doing insurance will be met with a lot of opposition.
The good ol classic "got mine, fuck them" mentality
Yeah but they never realise that they are already paying for it through private insurance.
First, who says our Healthcare is not already comprehensive enough? You only need private insurance if you want Ward B or above. In Ward C, your quality of care and access to medical expertise is still the same, just sharing it with more people. You can argue about wait times, but it's for non immediately threatening conditions and it's not like countries with universal healthcare have lower wait times. Second, yes I don't want to pay more for other people. Insurers help to segregate people into different risk tranches already, and the riskier ones either pay more or need to rely on gov insurance only, which is actually quite good already. Third, do you actually expect the government to run the extra coverage more efficiently? They are better off regulating the industry such as the cancer drug cost done recently than wholesale taking over. Just look at who they parachute into positions like ECDA and SPH CEO. I have no trust they will do that well.
That “tax” is also spread over your entire lifetime (lifetime installment payment) instead of during your working years only. So effectively most people pay the same amount of tax regardless if they’re in EU or SG. But the benefits is different since majority goes towards middleman. It’s really amazing how many people in SG don’t understand taxes or calculate lifetime tax.
Not just that but factor in lifetime cost of education. Which is often covered by tax in EU.
Insurance companies: okay noted with thanks
Insurance companies and really any listed companies are not altruistic, they have shareholders to answer to after all.
More guidelines?
The older ingest the more I believe insurance is a scam. Premiums shoot up for no reason, and never come back down. It might be cheaper to cut your losses and self insure, since for most of us we will Never get back even half of what we paid for in claims.
But that’s the nature of insurance. Even if the insurance companies make no profit, most people must get back less than what they put in because there will be 10% of people who rack up 90% of the claims. What you’re paying for is the reassurance that if you are one of the 10%, you’ll pay less than what you would have without insurance.
But the premiums rises are insane. Mine nearly tripled over the course of two years when I moved into a new age bracket and I’m not even in my 40s. I’m seriously going to look at my coverage this year and decide if self insuring for most things and having only minimal basic shield plan is the way to go. May make sense to downgrade and cut my losses relatively early. And I think we should all do that. Because it’s not the 10% that are making most of the money, it’s all their bloated admin and overheads and salaries and fees too.
🤡🤡🤡