Comments on: Decision #4: Which product?

By: Giovanna Grosch

Giovanna Grosch — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:44:14 +0000

Someone I work with visits your blog regularly and recommended it to me to read too. The writing style is superior and the content is top-notch. Thanks for the insight you provide the readers!

By: Luigi Fulk

Luigi Fulk — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:38:30 +0000

Thanks for the great post. I always try to bookmark life insurance or insurance related posts like this one.

By: Public Speaking

Public Speaking — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:34:50 +0000

Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.

By: High Quality Pictures

High Quality Pictures — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:29:09 +0000

Nice Site layout for your blog. I am looking forward to reading more from you.

triz
High Quality Pictures

By: Life Insurance Today

Life Insurance Today — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:06:52 +0000

As someone that really has no clue about insurance besides the one that I have for my car, this was well explained and insightful and I will surely be looking at life cover in the new year thanks for making it so clear to understand the different insurance covers out there.

By: Barefoot

Barefoot — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:31:01 +0000

I commisserate. My first investment also was an endowment policy – fortunately one with only a 5-year term. When it matured in 1999, I calculated my return: 6% per annum! Over a period when annual inflation averaged 10%… I suspect a lot of my contributions were eroded by commission. It would probably have been better if I didn’t take my maturity turn-out at that point, but extended my term for another few years. (The maturity date was shortly after the emerging markets crisis.)

It actually makes me quite mad when I hear about people being sold investment products that don’t suit their age and life phase. Do you even have dependents? Do you really need life cover? The annual fees also sound high to me, if you consider that most unit trusts have a total expense ratio of about 1.7% when you don’t use a financial advisor.

The good news, though, is that the regulators are making it more difficult nowadays for financial advisors to sell you anything without recording the whole consultation process and disclosing all fees. There are also proposals to change the Long-term Insurance Act so insurers can’t penalise you by more than 15% of the market value of your investment when you want to surrender your policy (currently it’s 30%). SA is slowly moving towards a more consumer-friendly financial industry.

By: (un)Lucky

(un)Lucky — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:39:07 +0000

Hi. Thank you so much for the concise and clear explaination of these often talked about products. I lean towards the two options for taking on the responsibility of endowment policies. I wish I knew this four years ago when the financial advisor my mom took me to – simply shoved two endowment type policies into my financial life > One locks me in for 10 years with life and disability cover attached. The second one locks me in for 27 years with life and disability cover attached. I also recently discovered (hence my search for South African opinions on endowment policies) that the 27 year policy is not even aimed at my personal choice of risk profile (considering age, goals, future investing potential, and time in the market). It currently has a moderate risk level and ‘basic’ annual fees of 2.04% pa. Not sure if this excludes ‘my’ financial advisors fees??? Hoping to at least change the underlying asset class and risk profile that is more to my current risk taking apetite… Wish I had known more then…