xen0, i like your last line. Insurance agents can't give you true feedbacks as they will claim that they are best and they can provide you a plan that best suits you.

IMHO, i think that it depends on what you want. Medical card is a must. If you have investment knowledge then u should just go for term insurance which has no cash value. Means the premium you paid every year will "burn" and you won't get anything back. The premium is much cheaper ad you canuse your extra money to invest. If you don't invest, i recommend you buy life insurance which has cash value. The premium is much higher but the return is higher than FD provided you do not surrender your policy too early. Usually the break-even point
(means the amount you will get if you surrender your polcy and the total premium paid is the same) is around 12/13 years. If you surrender your policy earlier than this, then you would actually incur losses.

If you really want to buy insurance, my advice is consult few insurance agents from different companies, understand their products and compare yourself.

but as i know, Great Eastern is Malaysia No. 1 company in terms of their market value, total assets, profits, total policies etc. Try check the summary from Bank Negara.


For Xeno,
wow...that's great for you to save RM800 per month...however, puttng everthing is bank account whether is FD or savings is never a wise act. I won't suggest you go for Investment-linked policy where it is insurace+investment as I think it's not a good product. Try check http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1016765 for more comments about it. If you are risk averse, then go for life insurance. What i mean incur losses here, for example, yearly premium is RM2k, after 5 years you already paid RM10k, but if you surrender you will get less than what you paid. But after maybe 15 years,you have paid RM 30k a if you surrender that time, the amount that you will get is more than RM30k.

If you dare to take risk and you want more liquidity of your assets, i would recommend term insurance+mutual funds. And for your information, insurance policy can be made up by mixing life and term insurance. You can buy a RM100k sum insured life policies which cost maybe RM2k plus and add another RM100k protection by adding few hundred dollars only. I can't remember what is the add-up protection called. And if you want to consult an insurance agent, make sure you have adequate knowledge about insurance so that you won't be misled by them.


I wonder when will Malaysia have a real financial planner that will develop a plan that best suits their clients. Not like the ordinary insurance agents who will tell you that they will give you the best but just offering their own products. I blelieve that every company will have their own strengths and have some products which are better than the others. After consulting few ex-agents, they told me that 4lli4nz's medical card is better than the others while G3 is strong for their life insurance.