AIA...

How was your experience with AIA?

Doctors can pattern like this..
However, insurance companies also have their internal medical team to go through these admissions.
Unless the readings, test results, etc warrants an admission, otherwise, the discharge GL may be denied.

And I personally discourage such practices, because it only artificially bumps up the claims ratio and ultimately the cost is then passed on to everybody.
Then everybody come and make noise when the medical rate hike is imposed and passed back onto everyone, including everybody that came to this forum to complaint about an increase on their premiums, complaint about ILP, complaint about everything but think they are very smart to unnecessarily admit themselves into our already overloaded healthcare system, just so they can save a few hundred ringgit.

Now, some of my own customers did respond to me saying that I can say such things because I make so much of their hard earned money.
My reply was simple. I only asked if they have been in front of the family of a deceased, who unfortunately died in front of the second nearest hospital they went to, not because they have no money to pay, but because the hospitals were all full.
I am not somebody who wishes ill upon anyone. I just pray that you don't have to be in my position, and I ask that if it is unnecessary, and within your affordability, just don't occupy a hospital bed.

It's cool to save some money.
It's even cooler to be proactive about a healthy lifestyle.

Go to your insurer's servicing branch, ask them exactly how your policy works, then ask about the options available to you with the aim to extend your coverage beyond age 70.

Take good care of wherever the entry point was, don't stress it for a good while.
Klo pecah nanti.... Susah bro

I wish to provide some clarity on some of the statements made.

1. Agak betul.
However, generally speaking, you are not the only patient that your doctor visits. You are one of the patients that your doctor visits. So let's say your doctor makes his rounds and saw you at 10am. By the time he gets back to his surgery, it's likely around 12pm. When your report is ready and sent to insurance company for discharge GL, likely around 2pm. You'll be successfully discharged right around 4pm. So let's not berate our doctors as "lazy"... They literally saved your life.

2. Dunno who your agent is, but I have agency support staff for these.
And frankly, most of what I will have a hand in, is to communicate with the doctor. Case to case basis. It is never a agent vs doctor or insurance company vs hospital situation (unless you make it out to be). Everybody is doing their roles, working together to deliver a service.

3. You got stuff to hide?

Regarding the different jargons:

Waiting Periods:
Day 0-30 - only covers for accidental conditions. What qualifies as an "accident"? 1. It is sudden; 2. It is violent (ada darah terkeluar); 3. External impact (kena tumbuk also kira). Any combination of two out of three qualifies as an accident. Dengue all 3 also got lah. Tetiba the nyamuk land on you (sudden), tembus your skin (external impact), suck your blood (darah terkeluar). Accident lah namanya.

Day 0-90 - cashless facility waiting period.

Day 0-120 - specified illnesses waiting period. Those kinds of illness that need time to brew before showing up wan.

First 2 years - contestibility period: where the insurer reserves the right to withold a claim, just to check for non-disclosure. After which the claim amount will be released upon completion of the investigations.

Any insurer does not have the right to terminate your policy for the sole reason of utilizing it within the first 2 years.
If that even remotely makes sense to you, why do you still buy medical insurance? Let alone changing every 5 years, which means you willingly subject yourself to underwriting every 5 years. And every 5 years your waiting periods and contestability period restart and (according to your logic) you buta2 wait 2 years cannot use out of the 5 years. I think your agent training you to be a repeat customer every 5 years. And since in between purchases you will DIY everything on your own and make sure you pay on time...

Bro, there are better and more efficient ways to shoot yourself in the foot... such as just shooting yourself in the foot.
Self-inflicted injuries (whether sane or insane) is a general exclusion across the industry ya <<< friendly reminder.

That obviously needs retraining...

That's the insurer exercising the contestability period loh... 2 years kan?
You also clarified it yourself on your second sentence kan?

I encourage you to look at it for what it is, and look at your own expectations, wants, and needs; then get something that works for you long term.

There will always be the next shiny thing that looks nice.
Why bother chasing for the latest and greatest endlessly?

Like what me and many others have been harping and pressing for in this forum for years:
Buy accordingly to what you need.

Today, my peers buy the exact same medical coverage as what I have, it'll be sekitar 6k/year.
Yet, I'm only paying around 4k annually.
Why leh?
Sebab, I dah bayar puluh tahun, dah jalan lama dah

Did you ask the agent "why ah?"

Yes, you're right.
A non-disclosure is essentially a breach of policy contract terms.
It has to be triggered.
A contestability period investigation can be initiated by the insurer, hence the policy wording "reserves the right".

What usually triggers this is the doctor's reports.

Case in point -
A person signs up for medical insurance 2010. Nothing declared.

In between, person starts taking diabetic medication, with the logic that it balances out the sugars from all the desserts that person consumes.
Come 2022, person submits a knee surgery claim. During consultation with the doctor, person says "yeah, I've been taking diabetic medication for over 10 years."
Once the report submitted, the claims dept terus question "bro, this one different from health questionnaire woh"
Terus trigger investigate, claims witheld.

(This is actual my actual case study. Yes, blew my mind as well, cari pasal)

Yup, over 10 years is exactly when leh?
Tu persoalannya

And the most logical thing is to produce a bloodtest report preceding the policy date, or a current one to show there is no diabetes. Make sense kan?
So now it's just stuck here lo.

This post has been edited by JIUHWEI: Sep 25 2023, 06:30 PM

By way of seeking treatment and going ahead to make a claim.

While you're weighing the worthiness, I'd like to offer a different perspective.

While gov hospitals are great, they are always full.
In an emergency, do you want to be left with no other options, or having access to private care?
I'm not saying that:
a. private care is out of reach for you;
b. gov hospitals are no good;
I'm just trying to get a point across. Would you rather kind of situation.

Yes, starting a new medical policy at a good old age commands a hefty sum annually, between 10k to 20k.

Which scenarios would you prefer?
1. Predictable amounts annually; or being slapped with a big ticket in an instant, with the potential of lingering amounts indefinitely?
2. To have paid all the premiums every year and didn't claim; or to look at the medical bills with regret?
3. To have to choose between saving money and saving your loved one... ; to have money weigh much lesser when making important decisions?

Medical insurance is just a tool.
When you have a nail to hammer but no hammer... how are you gna hammer the nail?
When you have a hammer and faced with a nail to hammer, do you even care how many nails that needs hammering?

So now you have a small hammer that was good for smaller nails in the past, and you see some bigger nails ahead.
What are you gna do?

I believe nobody can give you the validation that you seek, except for the person that gets to go through your finances, your cashflow, and your family.

Nobody who is worth their weight in salt would want the liability of being the one that asked you to terminate an insurance coverage, without knowing your commitments, your dependents, etc.

Where will the forumers be when shit hits the fan for you?
Likely still behind their keyboards, feeding buzzwords to the next person here seeking validation, with absolutely no regard for anything about you.

But buzzwords works better kan?
Afterall, truth always appear bitter and sounds like a lot of work to arrive at.

I have a new recruit and I took the opportunity to go through our contracts again.

Life planners like myself are deemed to be acting and giving advice, collecting payments on behalf of the company. Hence the liability lies with the insurer.
The insured can actually sue Life Planners like myself for mis-selling, and the insurer will be involved as well.
The insurer will be the one taking on the liability, while my contract with the insurer and my license is on the line.

So to circle back to one of our forumers’ previous question, I’d like to correct myself:
Yes, individuals acting in their own capacity to influence others in their insurance purchase are liable for their own actions, and can be brought to court, if a prima facie case can be established.
However, such cases will not be entertained by the OFS as it is outside of its range of services.

I think what we are trying to achieve here in this thread is to find what fits. I'm sure @lifebalance and @Ramjade are not offering opposing views, just different methods working towards the same goal.

Is it great to have more control over your investments?
For those who prefer it, sure!
For others like me who distinguishes money allocated for protection in one box and investments in another box, ILP works very well for me.
What's comfortable for me may or may not be your style.
Doesn't make me wrong or make you anymore right. It's just what fits.
We're all adults here, we make our own decisions and live with the consequences. We tweak along the way or pivot and change course if the situation calls for it.

I do feel that @lifebalance has his own style of approaching the subject, which tends to be rather holistic (his profession demands it of him), at times uncalled for. But I see that he's often leading forumers to think and choose for themselves rather than feeding info and playing with words, attempting to lead anyone one way or another.

And on the flip-side, @Ramjade is very price-sensitive, which is great for fresh graduates looking to take control of their lives for the first time. It's not wrong to compare and contrast, also not wrong to list out the pros and cons of certain products.
But the pros and cons are largely only relevant to you and people like you, @Ramjade. For your part to cater for people like you, your sharing here is indeed invaluable.

Standalone medical insurance is indeed a wonderful product.
And just like what you said, you pay the curve in your golden years.
Now, not everybody is as willing to set aside part of their long-term savings, investment returns to pay for the premiums at the time.
You can, but it's just not how I would arrange my finances.

Budget airlines are great. No frills!
That was in my younger days.

I'm now very married with parent, wife, and kid.
I want the frills of a full service airline.
I won't even get it myself. I will get a travel agent to get me those frills.

Every product meets the different needs of their respective market segments. That's all.
Why the need to champion one product over the other...?
Because you think it's better?

Imagine walking into a shop, a sales assistant comes up to you and just blab on about how great the shoe that they are trying to sell is.
Then you try to tell the sales assistant about what you're actually looking for, something more versatile, a sandal with a strap. Because you're going on a beach holiday.
Then the sales assistant gives you a pros and cons analysis of the shoe vs the sandal, and how the shoe is superior...
You then siam to continue browsing yourself. Another customer walks in, this time looking for school shoes for kids. The shop assistant recites the same pros and cons analysis of the one shoe he peddling... so on and so forth.
You beh tahan d, confront the shop assistant to stop terrorizing shoppers.
Last last the shop assistant tell you "I don't even work here. I'm offering you my analysis for free."

Bang, u xde keje lain?

Lepas minum kena rehat dulu sebelum tidur

I genuinely think an ILP is not for you.

Again, don't know what was discussed that led up to you purchasing your policy and the coverages that came with it.

Don't know anything about you, hence it won't be very responsible of me to comment further.

But from your responses, genuinely don't think ILP is a good fit for you.

Different insurers used to have different practices on process flow in the past, but now it's pretty much all aligned to follow the same flow.
Let's say your premium is RM100.
RM 100 is used to purchase units of the respective funds, reflected in your account value.
As and when the insurer charges for COI, fund management charges, medical services charges, etc, it charges to your policy fund value, which pays for it by selling some units up to the amount of value it is charged for.
This is generically how it works.

So you've depleted your account values, and now continuing to make payments, yet receiving letters requesting for premium payments kan?
This has to do with sustainability of the policy rather than just having account values in the policy.
You can check on your account value and continue to ignore the letters.
But there's other coverages that may or may not be in your policy, which I do not know what was discussed to arrive at those numbers (or not).
So you can understand that it takes much more considerations to arrive at definite answers kan?
I don't even know if those coverages are with your dependents in mind (if you have any)... What commitments you may or may not have also I have zero clue.
Pretty risky to just say "okay go terminate your policy" kan?
I don't even know head from tail about you. I only know you have your own preferences when it comes to investments. Even then, I don't know your time horizons, don't know your risk apetite... Really what also don't know.

How to responsibly give definite answers? Maybe those who are accusing me and my colleagues of being vague can help better la.
We don't have crystal ball.

So in the first 6 years, life planners like me do take a commission. Total comms is slightly less than traditional products.
Let's just put it here so that it is not left out.

Standalone plans got no premium holiday option.

Don't pay, after 30 days grace period, terminate terus.

Just comparing and contrasting ya.
Not trying to say one is better than the other.

Apples will never be as orange-tasting as oranges.