i took 10 minutes to read the article you shared and also part 2.

Part 1, considering the complexity of it, i would say a good attempt to talk about such technical topics in this manner. of course i think can be improved, but not too bad la.

the article is right about this being applicable to all policies. but i think if you bring a non-investment-linked product and ask the agent how much is the COI, agent can't tell you, because it's not shown anywhere in the sales material. Not agent's fault. In fact only a selective group of people will know the amount in the insurance company.

Because in Part 2 of the article, they "draw" out the COI for the first few graph. Kesian agent if customer really ask.

Read the first part. If you continue to pay at this level, it will sustain for 40 years. Which is quite long in my opinion.

The extra 400 that they are asking you to pay, is to sustain until end of term, which i'm guessing is age 100. I will be honest, not many practical people need a coverage until age 100.

You can also choose a shorter sustainability until age 80 (example) but that option is not in your letter.

The recommendation is not necessarily a result of fund not performing well, rather an awareness to you on the status of your coverage, enforced by bank negara.

This post has been edited by adele123: Sep 27 2020, 10:40 AM

the certificate that your friend has is ILP. I'm not sure why agent explained it is non-ILP. As you can tell, the name of the product bought by your friend is called Takafulink. It is ILP from PruBSN. you can always call PruBSN to confirm with the CS.

if you read carefully, your friend was told to add topup of RM152,000. isn't this more surprising than the RM400 per month?

anyway, to give you some explanation this could be a result of your friend not paying on time or bad fund performance or because your friend's coverage is memang enough to go up to age 64 only, right now.

But from age 64 to age 100, the charges are crazy expensive, so additional RM400 per month is 'normal'. I'm not saying the calculation has to make the most sense but like i said, the RM152k should be more shocking right?

I will be interested to know the result of your complaint.

On a side note, it's actually "normal". what they are trying to say is. I charge you RM500 per year, every year for coverage of 30 years. For whatever reason because you buy their takaful and many people die during the 1st 15 years, now, they tell you only RM700 per year must be charged every year. So you have to pay RM700 per year until end of 30 years, IF they dont increase the price again during that year 16 to 30.

yes, as per what is written there. however, i would again suggest getting the information directly from Etiqa, i somehow have reservation over websites like ringgitplus because i dont know how much accuracy can be placed upon their information. most in the market, the TPD coverage is up to 60 at least, if it's 45 does seem short compared to the market, but not beyond the realm of possibility.

You need to focus on the benefits that you need and matters to you rather than just listing them out. example, if car assistance does not matter to you because covered by car insurance, you should exclude from your analysis. Another example, Global Expert Medical Opinion from Allianz sounds good, but does it benefit you or is this a benefit you think matters?

If coverage term is a legit concern, you can ask AIA quote up to age 80. i believe AIA have that option. if you want to compare, try to compare closer if can't be exactly the same. there are too many variable varying too much to compare closer since you seem adamant to compare thoroughly.

The reason why advice is harder to be given because of the information overload. Also, i'll be honest, intraocular lens also not something you will enjoy at age 26, so i dont know if it is something you should compare now.

Something for you to think about. if you are price sensitive, maybe ask more information of the other coverage you are getting like any Critical illness coverage. those supreme/car assistance really not something to focus on.

Your agent is supposed to guide you through the process. there's usually slight additional explanation that comes in the letter. if you really feel the agent is useless, yes i think you should go to branch to solve it out. but be careful la, now covid ma, so choose the right time lo.

if you can share more details about your policy here, we can help explain abit more so that you dont need 2 trips to branch (hopefully, fingers crossed).

but FYI, i'm also feeling the pain of paying for the insurance for my parents, really getting very expensive. tough. sigh.

This post has been edited by adele123: Oct 12 2020, 01:45 PM

age 68... likely another jump in 1 or 2 years time. age 70 probably another hike increase in rates because you may have crossed the age band. but crossing age band is a normal hike. so the 5.8k may have factored in this already.

the hike that is informed to you by Pru via this letter, is the "abnormal" hike or what they call revise/reprice of medical product. Usually they will send you a letter and start with "healthcare cost have been consistently rising...", (someone who kena also send me a copy of the letter) and please pay the revised premium and new premium is RMxxx, effective this date. this is expected to happen every 2 to 3 years (word of mouth in the insurance industry)

So option
1) Continue to pay RM5,100. In this scenario, the cash value will be used "more" to sustain the deduction of the new increased charges of your PMM3.

You mentioned you do not want to touch the funds but the idea of this policy IS that you have paid more upfront in the past so that at times like this, you can have some flexibility of paying less due to affordability issues (especially covid now, other people got no job ma).

so chances are in this situation, your cash value may decrease (or decrease faster) but that's just how things work. even if you increase your premium, your cash value may still decrease but at a slower rate.

2) option 1 but reduce some other benefit that can be removed. example, weekly indemnity (your mother not working jor, so maybe just delete, save few ringgit also good). weekly indemnity got provide coverage to your mother it's just that usually marketed for working people when they lose income due to can't work because of accident. ADD, can still ok can keep. AMR, can save few ringgit also i guess, erm, it's when if your mother fall down, visit clinic can claim because medical card dont cover out-patient).

The 40,000 under Pru Assurance, maybe can reduce. that one is death/disability coverage.

3) pay the RM5.8k. This does not mean it wont increase or you dont need to top up in later years, merely a projection to last until age 80 (i assume is the term for your mother's policy)

4) cancel and hope your mother stay healthy (i have been contemplating this option but no guts to do so)

PS: Option 2 is recommended very general based on an average woman of 68 retired and these insurance coverage dont really make a huge difference to her finances (except for the medical) and her children can sponsor few thousand when needed and her children not relying on her as the main income earner anymore or ever in the past. Hope dont take my recommendation as bible.

PS side note: if you feel like want to screw this agent, can complaint to Prudential about this agent. actually he get commission when you increase from 5100 to 5800 also, even though the amount is very small but it's still money. maybe not enough to pay petrol for their BMW kut.

This post has been edited by adele123: Oct 13 2020, 12:25 AM

i dont have the full letter myself so i have to guess certain aspect and just explain the concept for you

Option 1 you mentioned even if you increase your premium, your cash value may still decrease but at a slower rate. but I thought it was as simple as units of unit trust bought x unit price, or you are referring to the rate of increase after each premium might not be in par due to allocation?

Example, if you pay RM5100 but your charges is RM6000, then it decreases by RM900 every year, assuming unit trust make 0% return for the year

If you increase to RM5800 but your charges is RM6000, then it decreases by RM200 every year. Of course there is a possible scenario that you pay RM5100, charges is now RM5700, which is why they ask you to pay RM5800. I would not know which scenario it is, so this is a generalised explanation of it.

The table of projection is probably mentioning that even though the charges is only RM6000 now, it will rise up to RM7000 because she is getting older. but this RM7000 excludes future repricing exercise which can possibly happen again in another 3 years. This RM7000 assume things stay the same, purely her getting older.

To surrender the policy will be an option after 70yo but in this case we "rugi" because the PMM3 and Enhancer that we paid years before had already factored in additional $$$ for 70 - 80yo I believe?

this part abit harder to explain, i try my best but really hard when can't draw. you pay more upfront is abit like menabung. it creates some money that you now call the cash value. if you surrender now (or at age 70), you get whatever that is the cash value. if you dont increase your premium, the cash value will be used for future deduction of charges of PMM3. so you can't say what you have paid caters for later ages. the charges for PMM3 not charged yet for later years. this is a "menabung" feature from Prudential.

supplementary reading from previous post

Prulink assurance is 40k, death / TPD only. ADD is 50k. if normal death, get 40k. if accidental death get 40k + 50k.

My job as teacher is done. Concept translated.

Yes. Rm6000 was just an example of your possible COI after this letter.

Yes. Shortfall deduct from your fund. Your number of units will decrease. The additional units you have is accumulated since the 1st day you started paying.

Note: while i have to admit the most technical people may say my explanation is not 100% technically correct but i think you grasp the main points i want to highlight which is more important than being able to technically explain every aspect of your insurance policy.

I am sort of facing the same problem as you but with aia. With our parents getting older, finding replacement is hard. So sometimes gotta just stomach first. My regret is not buying a deductible plan or co insurance plan for my mother to reduce cost of insurance when she was few years younger. < 60 and > 65 is huge difference from insurance perspective. Sigh sigh. Now is likely too late for me too.

Actually it's quite simple. Example deductible rm5000 (i think it's usually per year, or per disability, not per admission). If hospital bill is rm8k, then the good children like us bear 5k, 3k borne by insurance company. But if the bill is like 60k, then the insurance company will bear the 55k. From a simple perspective, 5k we can makan. 60k is hard to makan. It is a stop loss strategy in a way.

These type of plan is cheaper because you makan some on your own. Also mean you wont simply claim. Insurance company like people who dont simply claim. Not that they dont want you to claim, they dont want people with slight fever or food poisoning treat hospital like hotel and treat the insurance company like water fish.

Yes. Still the same. But frequency tend to be lower relatively. And when the something is cheaper, 20% or 30% of it is a smaller number.

The general advice is think 3 times before surrendering current policy.

It's usually not advantageous to buy new and surrender old ones. unless you buy online, sure, no commission then, you can change every year.

If buy via agent, initial expense is highest in the earliest years. when you buy a new policy, you incur the expense again.

medical card waiting period should be 30 days and 120 days. 30 days for most illness, 120 days for specific illnesses, you can lookup your contract.

but point here is dont simply surrender in the first place.

Bolded the important statement for your own benefit.

Try checking if there are other ways to upgrade on your existing policy before you jump to buying a new policy

you came to right place to ask this.

1a) You mentioned that you bought your plan SPE3 early this year. So, this SMCC was only launched in September this year. FYI, your agent is "BS-ing" you. You dont need to purchase a separate SPE3 to add on to the SMCC. purchasing another plan of course will be more costly. it's like buying 2 quarter chicken set from nandos but why should you when you can just order half chicken? So, what your agent didn't tell you is, you can just add SMCC to your current plan. there is NO DOWNSIDE at all on doing so.

i repeat no DOWNSIDE. You can keep your current CI Benefit rider AND just add on SMCC at 150k or 200k (not sure which amount you want). Of course, when you add the rider, unlikely it will be RM210 per month. Maybe RM250 per month or more but definitely not gonna reach 360 per month at your age. if yes, please come back and report here. email and complaint to GE . IF your agent insist on you purchasing another plan, just write email to GE to complaint.

Since you didn't cancel anything, THERE IS NO refresh of waiting time. Everything else is still as per previous policy. It's like ordering a 3rd scoop of ice cream to add-on to your 2 scoop ice cream with waffle. the 2 scoop with waffle is still fine and sudah makan already. you didnt cancel the waffle.

You are right to doubt that premium will increase significantly at your age (read my earlier paragraph) AND yes it will be redundant to pay for another ILP policy. You dont exactly pay more insurance charges per se because insurance charges is based on the coverage amount you have selected. HOWEVER, each ILP policy comes with a policy fee. So if you buy 2 policies, you get charged double the policy fee.

1b) Is SMCC necessary? i would say early critical illness coverage is important, i won't call it necessary but that's based on my own person history. i know someone whose family has a history of breast cancer. to her, she believes it is necessary. the normal CI coverage, is too hard to claim, it's like super serious only then you will get the money. which is why GE comes up with product like this (and many other insurance companies too).

2) lowering AL (ie removing smart extender and/or lowering the coverage from R&B200 to 150) unlikely to bring a lot of savings but there will be savings. just fyi. group insurance scheme is always going to be cheaper but i'm not too familiar with the T&C and price to comment. i'm guessing this one is from Syarikat Takaful Malaysia Berhad, was in THE SUN newspaper sometime ago when i used to pick up the paper.

the group plan probably has a deductible because they assume you already have your own coverage from employee benefit. NOW, if you opt for this and cancel your current medical plan coverage, there's a few issues to take note

a) can you continue to stayed employed (i assume your employer is providing the medical coverage up to the deductible amount which is why they are promoting this to the staff) or can you afford to pay the deductible amount on your own? if either of the answer is yes, then you MAY save some money by buying this "group" plan

b) you mention the deductible will be waived when you retire. What is the retirement age? What if you retire earlier? How much is the premium you have to pay if and when you retire? (i'm not looking for the answer to these questions but you should, because it matters)

c) since this is group insurance plan, who will assist if you need to make a claim?

Summary to answer Q2: you need to spend time to calculate how much you may save and how much you may gain from these but i'm not getting paid to do it. so you gotta figure out certain things on your own.

3) What you think is correct, to a certain extent but i dunno the price. So, how much savings again? There will be few issues to take note
a) the group insurance plan covers medical only and some life coverage (as mentioned by you). NO CI coverage if you surrender your current plan
b) if for whatever reason (i know the chances is low but it's not zero) that you may have some condition from now until you are 30+, maybe the insurance companies wont open their doors to you to let you purchase the insurance policy. i agree there's savings but there's no free lunch in this world, you are giving up something too.

your Question 1 is easier to answer and there's a clear solution (just need to show your angry face to your agent) and dont kena tipu by your agent. Just show the attachment i have attached to your agent if he insist that you buy another policy. i repeat, attach SMCC to your existing policy, NOT buy new policy.

Q2 and 3, i dont know much on group plan harder to comment.




Attached thumbnail(s)

Switch to plan with co-takaful or deductible. It will help. That is if you are ok with bearing some hospitalisation cost on your own.

Why not wait till you graduate? This way you have a better gauge of your income vs expenses then. For lower budget, maybe you should look at online for some simple coverage. Then buy a full fledge comprehensive plan via agents later on.

This post has been edited by adele123: Oct 29 2020, 01:03 AM

You cannot reject the increment. The charges will still increase whether you increase your premium or not.

Assuming your policy is an ILP, if you dont increase your premium, what happens is your account value will deplete faster and your policy may lapse when the account value is zero. So answer to your question, yes, it may affect.

Usually few things you can do, switch to lower plan, increase your premium as advised OR switch to a plan with co insurance or deductible. If really tight on budget need to speak to agent but again, last few post also someone mentioned agent not helpful.

Read my previous few post. The answer wont change much for everyone asking about this.

Someone by the name of tyenfei explained the concept. Not sure if it's fully digestable. But there's actually no real monetary impact of annual vs monthly from charges point of view usually. of course there's that, do monthly, dollar cost averaging old story, that still serve as many people's guiding principle

EXCEPT, there is another thing. Something called policy fee. Actually some insurance companies charge HIGHER policy fee for monthly, example RM8 a month because you pay monthly but may charge you RM7 a month if you pay annual.

So this can be, but MAY NOT be the reason. i recalled checking out GE, dont have this but i can be wrong. so maybe just additional theories for other who have ILP who may ask this.

PS: the above applies to IL only.

I used this many many times before in my previous explanation. You can view ILP + medical as chicken + rice in the chicken rice.

Chicken being the medical, rice being the ILP life portion. For customers who buy chicken rice, i give them chicken drumstick (best part). but those who come to buy chicken only, i give chicken wing (the "worst part") only.

of course the price of chicken rice > chicken only.

over the years, it is likely the total cost of chicken rice is likely to be higher. but the thing is, you will notice all the standalone medical are chicken wing. can't really compare chicken wing and chicken drumstick. if you want to compare ILP and standalone, this require alot of work, which i'm not sure even any agent can objectively do the comparison for you. they know drumstick is better. but they probably can't tell you wings is cheaper by how much, if at all cheaper although in theory it should be cheaper.

not that easy to compare, you pay me, i compare and do independence advice for you la. PS, i bukan agent yo.

This post has been edited by adele123: Oct 30 2020, 04:22 PM

oops, i think i got reported because i was "soliciting" business.

I think it's not fair to ask sales agent to to compare and make the chicken wing look like drumstick. maybe i'm wrong to said what i said previously but most people like chicken drumstick right, so they ok to eat chicken rice not just chicken? <-- back to my chicken rice analogy

i actually dont understand your question but i think in part you haven't fully be able to visualise the ILP plan. even cherroy's unit trust + medical does not seem quite easily understood by most people.

to keep it simple, you may be quoted RM2400 per year and you are expected to pay this same amount every year. Despite best effort from agents and insurance company, this 2400 may not be sufficient to last you until the end of the coverage term.

one of the most common event is medical repricing. HOWEVER, even if i own a policy that does not have medical, it is still no guarantee. bad market return, couple with late payment or mispayment, you may receive a letter next year from the insurance company, you may need to increase to 2700 per year.

Think for a moment, imagine, if you stop paying your house loan during your moratorium and you will want your loan to finish within the same period, what do you think you need to do? you gotta increase your installment.

as for standalone medical plan, the premium quoted is likely based on current experience and assumption, few years later, the pricing that you see, will no longer be applicable and will go up. it's not fair to merely say standalone cheaper in the long run without looking at other things. If really want to save money, buy co-insurance/deductible. frequency of happening is definitely lower



i dunno how to explain in the simplest manner. Imagine you have RM10000 in your cash value now. You Pay RM5000 every year. the medical COI is RM6000 every year. and you have 11 years left until the coverage end. assume cash value grow at 0%.

so year 1, you pay RM5000. your total cash value now is RM15000, your COI is RM6000, so your cash value will decrease to RM9000
year 2, rinse, repeat, decrease to 8000
year 10, decrease to 0
year 11, no coverage because decreased to zero. To avoid this, you can immediately pay 6000 before the insurance company terminate your coverage and you still can enjoy coverage for year 11 despite no cash value. because you have enough charges for year 11.

What happen in year 1 and year 2, is automatic. that "Withdrawal" of RM1000 in depleting your cash value happens automatically and does not need any explicit action from you.

that's the beauty of investment linked plan.

This post has been edited by adele123: Oct 30 2020, 09:37 PM

Ok. Faham. The prudential online website, i dunno if they will increase to 5600. But i think they will "auto" increase, purely my guess. In theory you can say no and continue the lower amount. But this may require manual human intervention, to lower it first, then when you go to their epay system before due, then pay the revised amount (the one you want, not the amount they think you should pay)

For my own case, it's not ILP. So memang need to pay higher. It's just mine was cheap, 20% maybe +rm30 only. Haha.

i forgot how stupid Prudential can be. now what i'm concern is, i think the agent bs-ing. anyway, in theory, you have every right to pay the premium you want without asking agent to withdraw the money, give you and you pay. this is not supposed to happen in an ILP plan. but i do worry prudential punya system memang this cacat (no prudential agent here to counter verify). I think i have been misled by the possibility of the stupidity of prudential.

depends on how much fuss you want to make to Prudential. if you got time, go make fuss and vent some anger and send email to BNM too if you want.

yes, to me, what GE is doing makes more sense.

they dont accept sick people, abnormal biologically. it's not personal. it's more biology

haha... let me give you a background why you have been fed the above. your old policy no longer pays commission to your agent. buying new policy now means, you will feed the agent new commission for another 6 years.

actually insurance company got "security" check. they discourage this by blocking agents from doing this to customer, but the "security" only last 1 year la hence the 2 years.

next, because you cancel and buy new, so your analogy tak sesuai. what your agent is recommending to you, is not like changing car. it's like having a second car and you know the 2nd car will have to start accumulate NCD on its own.

BUT, rightfully, under special circumstances, and this is in my policy contract as well, there is supposed to be some limitations/advantage in upgrading.

i know what you are angry about but since i'm not an agent of prudential (i think based on your new plan i'm guessing your current plan is prudential) i dont know what are the limitations available. actually most insurance companies have upgrade option but there's usually complication/limitation coupled with the fact that when you upgrade, agent dont get new commission, this is rarely being "advertised"

the 2 years contestable period, i'm not familiar with the limitation but in theory actually dont need to wait 2 years la. cause actual waiting period of a new medical policy is 3 months only. i'm actually planning to switch my mum's medical card, i'm not gonna wait 2 years, just let it overlap 3 months should be ok already.


This post has been edited by adele123: Oct 31 2020, 08:53 PM

you can try. use the information shared by cybpsych on GE and compare that to what prudential is giving you. i can say if you are in the mood, complaint to BNM, saying things like you can't afford to increase, but actually there's money in my account, i dont know why prudential forcing me to increase. i was told by my agent ILP is very flexible. i'm genuinely curious la.

not every thing is race and religion. People who are under HRT means their body is physiologically very different

There's not enough sample size for insurance companies to assess how to accept these risk and charge them accordingly. Just like why smoker is more expensive than non-smoker? for a non-smoker like me, i think it's fair smoker people pay more, because they are of higher risk (statistically proven). but no information and data for those under HRT. so, being the profit making entity that they are, just decline lo and not accept the risk.

1) by right no issue. because assuming your deduction can survive one year's deduction that's like buffer 12 months already. the charges are being deducted monthly. but you need to "monitor" closer if market crash la... so you pandai pandai set some buffer. this require "work". asal jangan bagi account value zero.

2) so, this is old plan right. so medical in the olden days rarely goes up to age 100. so 80 sounds about normal. but even olden days, the basic plan (death disability portion) usually ends at age 100.

so maybe that's the reason of sustainability until 100 year old.