Once in a month? Once in a quarter? Once in 6 months? Once in a year?

Now if your frequency of meeting up with the insurance advisor falls outside the range laid out above, it does not necessarily be a bad thing as well. But the question you often asked me would be…

“is that important?”
“and how does that going to impact the professionalism of the advisor?”

But i suppose that the most important question that you have to ask is this :
“how does that, or how will that impact me? impact my personal financial plan? impact my life plan?”

Now many people do not realized this, even majority of the insurance sales rep may not be consciously aware of this. After a plan, a policy, or a solution has been sold, that does not signal an end to the relationship, that is actually the starting point of the advisor-client relationship. It is indeed an opening, a creation of an important link, important relationship.

It is clear and obvious that we often hear sales rep playing with words, using ‘plan’ in substitution of the resistance generating word like ‘insurance policy’, ‘insurance coverage’, the word plan is used in preferences to those words conventionally used. It is actually quite accurate to use the word plan, because whenever one committed his or her resources to insurance product, one actually is doing the act of planning, and implementing the plan via financial commitment.

Since ultimately it is about planning, have you ever seen someone has a plan, without an objective? Clearly this is impossible, for if you do not have any objectives, then what is the purpose of having a plan? Right?
Furthermore, if you do not have any objectives from the initial point, then how do you start to plan something without knowing the desire outcome or goal? Does this not make sense?

Make it simple, if we want to plan something, we must establish and identify what our objectives, goals are. Just remember this fundamentallycritical concept now.

So, now we have known what our goals, objectives are; and we are so determined and took the initiative to plan our way to achieve that goals, to realize those objectives and we are happy with the planning and efforts.

The next question that i am going to ask you would be, do we stop after this? Is a plan enough in itself?

Absolutely no! You asked, ‘why not?’

Let me point out this very critical step that most people tends to overlook, even they are experience insurance or sales representatives from strong company.

The critical step that most people often overlook is, to monitor the plan!

If you have a plan that you think could help you achieve the objectives, and you just stop there without knowing if the plan is doing well to meet all our expectations, without knowing if there’d be any new alternative plan to yield a better results, without knowing if the plan we put in placed is actually working, then you could be hit in the future when everything is too late!

Therefore, after knowing your objectives, your financial objectives, your life objectives, any objectives in life or even at work, you need a plan. After a plan is made and is being implemented, we will need constant effort to monitor, review and evaluate the effectiveness of the plan, if there’s room to adjust for improvement, why not? if the plan is not doing well, would not it be wise to make correction on it?

So, if your insurance rep do not find you to do this fundamentally vital work of monitoring, reviewing, then it is very likely that your insurance rep has the mindset of himself or herself as a salesperson only. Remember, a sales person objective is to sell you products, a sales person main objective is to earn money via sales generated.

But if your insurance rep will do this critically vital work of monitoring, reviewing, and following changes in your life with you, especially financial changes, then your insurance rep is actually playing a role of a professional who tends to place your benefits and well-beings as his top priorities. This is towards advisory value based approach which has the major aim of securing a win-win and healthy relationship with customer by offering advises and suggestions that was designed to fit into client’s integrated financial plan! Having said that, it also means this is based from client’s perspective, not the salesperson perspective.

So if your insurance agent rang your phone and suggest to help you do review on your current portfolio, be open minded at first, but do not easily buy into their suggestions before testing for their credibility and knowledge in managing your financial plan, it will be a massive risk you do not want to play with.

Good one?

The average life span for both genders is extending and we generally can feel safe to say that we are able to live to an older age compared to our ancestors.

Sounds interesting and great!

What’s the bad news?

The bad news is, in the process of living longer, we generally will face an issue which during the process, we may well outlived our ability to survive economically, owing very much to the inflationary pressures and the ability to generate income post-retirement for our very own sustenance.

This could well ring some alarm in some people, and to some other, they may think that somehow they still have plan B to back them up at post-retirement.

The complacency is somehow instinctively true, because most of us tend to draw some reliefs from our cultural practice where elderly parents can rely on their grown-up adults to take care of their living expenses, and well-beings. However, it may be danger to take things for granted. We have seen and observed signs that this cultural practice of filial piety is progressively under massive threat of extinction as the impact and demands of the modern society kicks in and take toll on the grown-up children lives. The cost of living has escalated many folds and this mean that the ability for working adults in future to take care of themselves is already a huge challenge, let alone to take care of their immediate family. Just give a moment of thoughts at this, do you think that your parents spent more of their money on their children, which mean you; or they spent more of their money on their own parents, which mean your grandparents. This may already reflect scene that likely to take place when you begin to rely on your parents for your post-retirement life.

In view of all these transformation that taking place, maybe, it is wiser to plan for one’s destiny than to rely on a cultural practice that has become unreliable and offer no feature of guarantees. The need for retirement planning is at stake more than ever now, and if we are still young, in our twenties or thirties, we are actually at a very advantageous position to combat this.

Time is really of the essence and is a vital determinant for the whole process. The more time we have prior to retirement, the easier the process. If you have more time than me, you will have a ladder that is easier to climb, while my ladder could have a steeper slope, or bigger step.

There is also a misconception in society and the mindset of those at the advantageous position that retirement planning is something should be dealt at when we are at forties, but not prior to this age. I have also came across a banker and insurance agent who asked me why at the age of 26 I am so keen on planning my retirement via their products. I asked for them to explain the reason behind their curiosity. They plainly just said the same thing, that I am still so young.

While it may seems like a rare thing for most people, but I just think that, the sooner I plan for it, I will have more confidence of realizing my financial blue print, and I will have an easier process, I will have a lower commitment and burden to my presence lifestyles, and I will also have more options as to what financial vehicles I could use to realize my ultimate goal— comfortable retirement lifestyles.

What about you?

Would I be correct to say that when someone places commitment to a life insurance policy, the very main concern of that person would be to ensure that his loved ones are always well provided for because his loved ones will need funds as soon as possible to cover for legal, medical and other expenses, not to mention utilities bills and loan repayments.

This is where an insurance policy will be most useful to the. With a policy, you can ensure that they receive the monies due quickly. Only if the life assured have named their loved one as nominee.

Failure to make a nomination simply means that the insurer would not be able to make payment until a court has issued Grant of Probate (if the deceased has left behind a will), or Letters of Administration (where there is no will). This, could mean a waiting period of many years.

On the other hand, if the deceased is a non-Muslim and have nominated spouse, children, or parents (if there is no surviving spouse or children), they are entitled to the policy monies without having to wait for the Grant of Probate. Moreover, a trust policy would be created for them under which these monies do not form part of the deceased’s estate. As such, debtors do not have the rights to claim the monies from the beneficiary. This means that the deceased’s spouse, children, or parents will receive the sum paid out by the policy in 100%.

What happened if the nominee is not spouse, children, or parents? But someone else, like uncles, nieces, siblings, or even a friend?

Under a non-Muslim’s policy, the nominee in such a case is not entitled to the policy monies as a beneficiary. He or she only entitled to receive the money as an executor, and must pass it on to the deceased’s estate, thus become part of the deceased’s estate, and be distributed according to the will(If there is no will, estate will be distributed according to the laws of distribution, after debtors have claimed their entitlements).

The lesson here is that if the life assured’s intended beneficiary is not a spouse, child or parent, then he must write a will naming that person as beneficiary. Once he does this, the nominee will receive the policy monies subject to the laws of distribution- once all estate’s debts have been settled, otherwise, they would not even entitled to receive a single sen!

However, a trust policy does not apply if the life assured is a Muslim, in which case the nominee acts as an executor and must distribute the policy monies according to Islamic law.

* the above information is obtained from by Life Insurance Association Malaysia (LIAM)

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that the role of insurance is altogether negative and dark! The fact is that human surely need insurance from the day we were born into this beautiful world, at different stages of our lives, we will lead a different lifestyles and need a different insurance to back us up, financially, and also from our responsibility point of view.

Ultimately, people will always have a questions in mind, that is, ” What Insurance Do i Need?” This is indeed the question that most people would ask to themselves, but due to the dark reputation of this industry in the past, consumer become skeptical of the answer provided by the agents as well, despite this industry now is under strict governance by Bank Negara Malaysia.

For starters, you will need Health Insurance. Everyone needs medical care. Even if you’re in good health and you don’t get sick a lot, there is no way to avoid accidents and injuries, and having regular checkups is a crucial part of living a long and healthy life. The cost of medical care is ever on the rising end with a minimal 15% inflation per year reported, we do not need to be great in math to know that one minor accident can send you into debt for years or bankrupt your family.

Then, this is the wrong perception people always have, that we all need life insurance. Actually, not all of us needed life insurance.  For example, if you’re healthy and have no dependants, you probably don’t need life insurance. But if you have a child, a spouse, a parent or sibling that depends on you financially, you’ll want to make sure they’re taken care of should anything happen to you. Even if you don’t have dependents, you might just want a policy that will at least relieve your relatives of the burden of funeral costs.

Now, here’s where it gets really morbid – what if you’re in an accident and you don’t die, but become incapacitated and unable to care for yourself? That can be a huge burden on your family, and even more expensive than funeral costs. That’s where Life Insurance comes into the rescue too!

There are surely more than 2, or 3 roles that life insurance play in our life stages. Try to be neutral and open-minded and we will realize that it somehow will have a role in each stages of our lives, if you see that, surely planning for it is making all the senses in the world. Ultimately, we need to take action.