Tan Kin Lian is an ex-CEO of NTUC Income. He stepped down after 30 years of Service in the Company. He maintains a blog and is well visited by averaging 800 people per day. I visit his blog on a daily basis to learn and to share. I like to post a few comments on how I feel about his blog.
1) He avocates against Life Insurance, Endowments, ILPs, Unit Trust and Private CPF approved Health Insurances.
Comment: Interestingly, he did not say all these while being a CEO of NTUC Income and seems not to know what ETF and index funds are. He even came out with several Endowment and Life insurance plans months before leaving the company. He seems to become a saint right after April 07 upon leaving NTUC Income and tell the whole world to be careful with agents and all these insurance companies.
He has his views to the above statement but he have inadequate ground knowledge of why some people simply wants these plans. Readers in his blog start to feel that agents are a batch of liars and only greedy agents will recommend such plans.
2) He seemingly feel that most people does not need a Financial Adviser. They can easily find the cheapest term insurance and invest through ETF.
Comment: It will be great if the public wake up in the morning lining up to buy insurance and knowing exactly what to invest and how much insurance to get. They will read up themselves and do their own regular reviews. There are no need to rebalance an investment portfolio. Readers in his blog generally feel that advisers are only salesman trying to cheat the people out there. Financial Advisers are "CHEATS"
3) NTUC Income seems to have a change in cooperative values after a change of CEO
Comment: The new CEO, Tan Suee Chieh, feels that he needs to run the company more commercially in order to complete with the large players like AIA and Prudential. If not, NTUC Income will sink deeper to a stage where its impossible to fight anymore. Readers in his blog blasted whatever new plan NTUC Income come out with and allow comments seemingly to tell the public that NTUC Income no longer care about the people.
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Generally, many of his postings talk about the same thing. Most of them do benefit the readers but one thing I hated to see are the unfair remarks made towards Financial Advisers and allowed comments that insulted them. (Though many deserved to be insulted, but not all. There are good advisers around.)
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He will gradually destroy the reputation of the advisers in the industry. He probably feels that agents shouldn't earn too much(Maybe his benchmark is $2k/mth, thats what he paid to the salaried consultants in the company. He even tried to cap the commissions of his mobile Financial Consultants at one stage).
He will gradually destroy the reputation of the advisers in the industry. He probably feels that agents shouldn't earn too much(Maybe his benchmark is $2k/mth, thats what he paid to the salaried consultants in the company. He even tried to cap the commissions of his mobile Financial Consultants at one stage).
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He might form a new insurance company after serving his 2 years non-completing treaty . A company that works like the Budget Airline of the Insurance Industry. No fuzz, no frill, simple objectives. It will be interesting to see how the industry will turn out after his entry...
13 comments:
This ex-ceo guy is tarnising his own reputation.
Maybe he wants to prove to all those NTUC Income Directors who asked him to step down that he can operate a company without agents.
He wants to prove that an insurance company can operate by Internet and salaried staff.
Tarnishing own reputation? I don't think so. He is a challenger. He will go all the way.
Adrain, you have a lot to catch up with your English. Plenty of grammatical errors and poor sentence construction; spelling errors too and misuse of words.
I admire you for your courage despite
your poor command of the language.
I won't challenge your views about ex-CEO of NTUC, neither do i want to criticise your current ceo who is trying his best to sweep clean the organisation.
As a financial planner you know full well the current endowment and whole life plans are not good and are unable to give the full stretch of cleints' money. Maybe this is not the point, your clients must have their needs fully met. Can wholelife and endowment do the job? you will be failing your clients if you go ahead with these types of plans because of commission and leaving your client with a big gap.I often hear "it s my client's wish or my cleint wants it",is it the way you practise as financial planner. Adrain, you must remember that you have to comply with your Association's ethics and code of practice and also the FAA. The reasons as given are definitely not on reasonable basis. Do you know you are bringing disrepute to your association with this shoddy kind of practice? You must at all time put your client's interest first.
You are the adviser and not the client.
I thought the agents loved him. he gave business to those 3 legged agents who praised him sky high. Now they talk bad about him because there is a new ceo? Have they shifted their
'3 legged' praise to the new ceo hoping to get favour, to get leads?
Tell you , all ntuc agents are bunch
of salesmen who cannot be trusted. There is always money in between frienship. They are unqualified, incompetent, usless. All those who blogs have one motive, to get favour from mr. tan. All the blogs are advertisement and re a shame to ntuc. There is only one good blog, other than yours, is glen toh's vblogs. The ther others are disgrace and full of rubbish and at one look they are not qualified. If they don't have blog maybe people may think they qualified and now people can see they are nothing but salesmen and going for high commission promoting revosave and revolife. Next prodcut is sumorevo.
adrain, quit and be somebody. don't stay around and let your self esteem get hurt by this compnay and its bunch of cheats.
What makes you think company must have agents? Aviva has no agents. Prudential UK has no agents.In US, UK, Australia insurance companies are without agents.
I'm disappointed that all comments are without identity. I find some of them interesting and thought provocating. It will be endless if I am to engage with arguments here.
By recommending a Traditional Plan does not necessarily means that an adviser is not ethical. Every individual needs, savings perspective are different. It is extremely difficult to use a similar scientific approach for everyone.
We cannot force a person to a person to invest if he dead against it. I think he still be better off with a traditional savings plan with moderate returns of 4.5% p.a if he fully aware of his options. (However, I am against excessive Life Insurances)
I believe anonymous 12:46 is a CFP. If such plans are against Association's ethics and code of practice, they should have been removed without dispute. Anyway thanks for your reminder about code of practice to me.
Adrain, how many of your clients are rich and who can splurge on low return and expensive traditional products. Can the poor people afford to be poor?
When you mentioned the word 'needs' i think you are confused with 'want'. Example. client tells you i cannot take risk or i prefer something with saving. The client is actually is expressing a want or a wish or a desire. This is not needs.This is where you make the difference as a planner, an adviser and not an insurance salesman.
Secondly, client is in no position to know which is better for them. You, their adviser is an expert, should advise which is better for them. Often clients are advising themselves. It is sad that agents sell according to the wishes of the clients, which all of the times are wrong.
I am not against traditional.The problem is agents don't work harder for their client. They just give what the customers want and collect the commission, wipe your backside and leave. Worse, most of the clients are poor people who need a lot of help to give the best run for their money so that they can achieve some kind of financial independence. Do you know $20 can give a coverage of $500,000? Which is better for the client? How much saving and coverage can you get with $20 for a whole life? I find it disgusting that ntuc agents have no qualms proposing such plan for a $20.
My wish for 2008 is that i can practise on a level playing field without having to contend with those unethical, unscrupulous, cheats,liars,mis-sellers,missrpresenters,
and con artiste salesmen and women.
As long as they are around i will continue to fight them until they are ridden off. Hope that day will arrive when customers will be able to get responsible financial planning and be free to engage any adviser without fear of having one rogue, incompetent and dishonest salesman or woman.
Hope Adrain will join in this fight against them to bring about a safe, clean environment where people will get the best advice to achieve financial independence.
Ntuc agents are ungrateful dogs and bitches. They now bite the hand that provided them a good earning job. Many of the agents would have been a maid, clerk, some bar hostesses, taxi drivers , bar bouncers etc if not for Mt. Tan.
I decided to publish the above remarks to let you guys see what type of sick and perverted remarks I am getting from these anonymous daily. Its true. "DAILY"...
Adrain, don't get worked up. This is part and parcel of opening up your blog. it is interesting, don't you think. If you want postings that are from the heart you will get the real feeling from the ground. This is real feed back.In this case it is genuine feed back about ntuc agents. At least you know that is one who feels that way about ntuc agents. The question is, is it true? Is it true that agents turn against Mr. Tan?
If it is true, it is true.
Don't get upset. look at it positively.
Hi, just found your blog, interesting, though have not read all your entries. I felt exactly the same as what u thought abour mr tan kl. I assume u are working in income, u should feel fortunate that mr tan kl is no longer your ceo. However would u rather be an in house IC?
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