Hi Everyone, RM100/month can get life/critical illness insurance or not for kid ~2 yo? standalone or ILP is fine...^^

hi PJusa, could you list GI medical vs rider medical pros and cons?

i know that GI medical are usually more expensive for the same coverage and some are not guaranteed renewable. Your agent is also more likely to service you properly as they recieve the same amount of commission until the end of contract compared to rider medical(which is attached to life) which they can only get commission for the first 7 years? after that they get nothing.

can...s long s u dun put in medical card n the sum insured is VERY LOW n cash value also VERY LOW u can do it

1 of my client is 4.5 months old i did a plan that is 120 with medical card just last week got her in n out of hospital for flu n fever. the mom so hapi n the baby now smiling d

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Added on November 4, 2010, 4:09 pmrockets...i'll let those whom r more senior then me explain the pros n cons bit

yet need to clarrify..it's only 6 years only.
s for GI it's s long s there's premium to collect yearly (aka during renewal) then u get commission (cos it's a new sales every time the policy is renewed)

This post has been edited by coolpajames: Nov 4 2010, 04:09 PM

ok..thx for the feedback and already got medical card, just need to add some for life & Ci.

hmm...u wanna get a new 1 or upgrade ur current one?

Sure. But not much coverage. If include medical card, you can only get R&B 100 only.

I did for few client:

Case 1: Takafulink (ILP) - Monthly RM 100
Death: RM 20k
CI: RM 10k
Accidental & Disablement: RM20k
Medical Card: TH100 (R&B 100, RM 50k annual, RM 500k lifetime, RM100 no claim bonus)
Hospital Allowance: RM200 per day
ICU Allowance: RM 250 per day
Surgical Allowance: up to RM2,500
Payor Benefit
Parents Benefit

Case 2: Takafulink Cerdik (ILP) - Monthly RM 80
Death: RM 20k
CI: RM 10k
Accidental & Disablement: RM20k
Medical Card: TH100 (R&B 100, RM 50k annual, RM 500k lifetime, RM100 no claim bonus)
Hospital Allowance: RM100 per day
Payor Benefit
Parents Benefit

Case 3: PRUmychild (ILP) - Monthly RM 70
Death: RM 20k
CI: RM 10k
Child Specified Illness: RM10k
Medical Card: PHL100 (R&B 100, RM 50k annual, RM 500k lifetime, RM100 no claim bonus)
Payor Benefit
Double Parents Benefit

More on basic protection.

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Added on November 4, 2010, 5:37 pmLife & CI (100k) from PruBSN CrisisCover, age 4 y.o RM45 per month until age 60

This post has been edited by ajau: Nov 4 2010, 05:37 PM

rockets,

i can try to put it in keywords. i think i have been to great lengths about many points already anyways.

GI

+ charges will be lower
+ comission of 15% can be saved by insuring directly with the company
+ no lock-in into specific plan or company
+ take-over-policy with other provider easy to arrange
+ not bundled you only pay what you really want
+ guaranteed renewable (other policies forget them!)
- need to monitor policy/must not forget to renew
- after big claims, hard to get *new* cover (still can renew)
- usually no upgrading as in life policies (but still can be done, mostly as new policy)
+ downgrading of plan is super easy
- limit on cover max. 80 years (what then?)

rider
+ smoother premiums (i.e. no need to safe for yourself)
+ prepayments are invested and generate returns without you having to work for it
+ often easier to upgrade within a family of policies
- rider (needs main policy which you might not want)
- normally sold in packages that cross-sell
- locked-in (high financial losses if you terminate the policy and walk to other insurer)
+ adding riders is easy (but you can also buy GI instead)
- removing riders can be costly
+ guaranteed renewable
+ longer potential cover (up to 100, GI longest i know is 80)

all plans also should not have loadings based on personal claims experience.

those are the main points that come to mind. i find the comission for medical insurance slightly obscene and am considering to move my axa policy to direct to. its the last one under agent and moving would save me several hundred bucks per year. i am not too sure about the detailed comission structure for life but yes if you tie a GI policy to an agent they get the comission every year and it sort of puts pressure on them. but the comission is way too much in my book. afterall if i make a claim i can also just seek the insurance's help. done it before and never had any issues.

anyone who wants to add to the pros/cons or discuss them please feel free. i am no agent its not my rice ball that is on the line i just prefer GI because i feel the benefits outweight the disadvantages.

get a new one..

Not sure where you get this point. In ILP, removing rider means you are removing its insurance charges as well as its premium. If you have payor rider, you are reducing some part of it premium as well.

i mean what happens if i decide to cancel a medical rider. of course it would reduce the premium but i would also incur losses in terms of sunken costs that have been contributed while i had the cover and which where meant to cover for the future as well. so in that sense it's sort of a costly undertaking. correct me if i am wrong there.

The premium for medical card attached to ILP is based on entry age. Usually the premium is higher than the actual insurance charges for that particular year. So, there is a possibility that there is a surplus in your account at early stage. If you cancel your medical rider, the surplus is still there. You can withdraw this surplus subject to term & condition (there is no charges to withdraw your cash but you need to maintain a minimum cash in your account).

I had made a comparison between few GI medical card & medical card attached as a rider. The insurance charges for medical card attached as a rider is cheaper.

There is pro and cons between these 2 type of cards and it depend to individual which one they prefer. I would suggest you check more on:
1. Guaranteed renewal
2. Premium/Charges will not increase based on number of claim made per individual cases.
This is more important to check rather than arguing stand alone or as rider.

Optionally, you should also check on:
1. Annual limit
2. Lifetime limit
3. Schedule of benefit (some has limit per benefit, some put as charge subject to annual/lifetime limit)
4. Co-insurance / Co-payment / deductible

My opinion, if you are young, ILP may be good for you especially if you do not have any insurance cover yet. If you already purchase some policy but you are lack in some aspect, you may want to go for stand alone type of insurance policy.

ajau,

my research has shown that the cost for insurance per RM of lifetime cover is cheaper pretty much across board. and this makes perfect sense simply because premiums are not guaranteed and hence life insurance must commit to its forward estimation on premiums while general insurance can adjust. this leads to a lower margin of error and hence cheaper premium. and on top you can get additional 15% less by going direct. this translates to a significant saving of around 20% or more depending on what cover you choose. of course some GI covers are priced very high as well and give little price advantage over life or none at all. but those can be singled out.

the two points you rised are very important (1. Guaranteed renewal and 2. Premium/Charges will not increase based on number of claim made per individual cases) and i will be very open here by saying the following:

ANY medical insurance that does not offer those two points is junk and a waste of your money. DONOT buy such insurances - they are not really insurances because the insurance chose not to bear the risk it should bear.

I have always and only considered solely products that offer both points and there are plenty of options that remain in the general insurance market.

I think the question standalone or rider is the next consideration i.e. point 3 once conditions 1 and 2 are fullfilled. Mainly because of the implications that arise from comitting.

The next step would be premiums i.e. what is the best deal for my premium.

the other important things to look for we have discussed before and i totally agree:

1. annual limit should be as high as possible
2. life time limit dito (or none at all)
3. totally agree - sublimits suck but are usually used by the insurances that also dont honor the two most important questions (guranteed renewable & no personal loading) so they are usually out of the game long before
4. the amount i have to pay certainly is important as well! due diligence when buying applies i guess.

i used to enjoy a really great unlimited cover for many many years but eventually changed due to financial considerations (premium of 5k p.a. at age 20 and 20k at age 50 felt a bit silly eventually).
and i have to be honest the fact that all of a sudden limits are an issue didnt make me feel to comfy but if limits are set sufficiently high, the risk of exceeding them can be minimised. which is why i have a rather large budget for pure health care and have allowed for a burst with additional deductable cover. with my current company cover + AXA SCO 500 + TM MedicPlus max plan i can claim roughly 1M per annum on "burst mode" which is pretty good i assume.

i agree with you that GI cover is great to fill gaps. but i dont agree that ILP is the way to go. its eyecandy in a way because it uses projected returns which might or might not come true. also - i am not sure for which insurances this currently applies - i have come across some policies (namely manulife and a plan from AIA i believe) which had interesting fineprint: premiums were not really guaranteed but could be adjusted based on portfolio claims experience just the same as GI policies. so the whole idea of fixed premiums was not really true. maybe some agents can shed some light there?

i also am of the opinion that an ILP or classic life policy might give me a whole lot of covers that are not really needed. this and that rider is added to fill a annual premium requirement and the actual cover for the areas that matter is small.
i have seen friends covers who thought they got a good one cause the premium was like 3000+ p.a. and then it turned out to have actual cover for health of 50k and CI of 100k. and those where the areas which they thought they had covered well. the money was however allocated for entirely other things. not saying this is always the case but combo-offers are usually confusing and people end up with stuff they didnt really want cause they didnt really grasp what was beeing offered to them.

can i ask you, how did you compare the medical card premiums? same cover product once as standalone and once as rider? accumulate premiums as NPV over the full period of possible cover and then average it to annual premium? if so i'd be interested to see the values. i am always open to better offers for my medical cover

PJusa,

My statement (regarding premium/charges of medical card) is in general by comparing few. I'm not really want to compare the price but since you brought up medical card attached to ILP is costly compare to stand alone, so I'm highlighting this may not true for all cases bases on my rough comparison.

And I'd read in one article about comparing between medical plan stand alone / rider and this is about the same statement issued by the CEO (if I'm not mistaken) from the insurance company.

It is very hard to compare between each medical card because I could not find any identical medical plan from different company.

For example, I take ING (sorry ING agent, I didn't mean anything bad) vs Prudential.
I hope this website could be the correct one. And compare cashless option (IMPlus 3 - male) and with my previous posting abt PHL400 insurance charges (I was putting the charges for male)

At age 22-29, the premium for IMPlus 3 is RM923 p.a. PHL 400 insurance charges is between RM790 - RM1150.

But you need to bare in mind, for IMPlus, you only pay RM50 per admission while PHL you need to pay 10% co-insurance (min RM300, max RM1000).

There is also different in other schedule of benefit:
R&B for IMPlus is RM260 while PHL 400 is RM400
ICU for IMPlus is RM300 while PHL is as charges
and few others benefit.
And you can compare between its lifetime limit too.

I'm not saying Prudential is better. You need to look at other pros and cons and you decide which is more suitable to you.

If you had the premium list for AXA, you can compare with PHL400 insurance charges and let us know which one is cheaper.

ING also have medical plan that can be attached to ILP. and I believe the insurance charges for ILP medical plan should be less than premium of its stand alone medical plan. And this could be the correct way to compare (if the schedule benefit is similar between standalone and rider)

Regarding your friend paying 3000++ p.a. and get low benefit. It is more on discussion between your friend and his agent. Sometimes in the discussion, they talk more on saving/investment not abt protection. And I must admit that some agent had given wrong advise or we can say 'syok sendiri'.

I met my friend who is paying abt RM4000 p.a. for PRUlink (quote by other agent) and only getting RM62,500 p.a. annual limit of his medical plan, while he should be getting RM100k. From further investigation, I find out, my fren told his agent that he do not want to pay for premium after retire. So, I assume the plan is designed such that he has lots of cash value to pay for insurance charges after he retire.

So for your friend, he can re-valuate his policy and modify the plan without increasing the premium if he wish too. Remove any rider that he do not want so he is not wasting his money.

This post has been edited by ajau: Nov 6 2010, 01:30 PM

hi, looking for a medical card for me and my spouse. looking for something cheap paid yearly. if possible one which i dont need to go to do medical check up lol.

baper u punyye budget?

ajau,

agreed its not easy to compare but your comparison lacks serious consideration:

if you want to compare premiums between the two alternatives then you need to look at the overall period of possible cover since this is the basis of calculation for the rider. also a medical insurance is long term so you should compare the total costs for the insurance cover and calculate the net-present-value (NPV) of the total premiums payable for the entire period of cover.

the problem is finding two identical plans. but that can be overome if we look at two almost identical plans that offer the same lifetime maximum. that way the maximum amount claimable is the same as as such the maxium loss to the insurer is identical. using this as a proxy we can calculate the total costs for a rider policy and a GI policy by summing premiums from the the beginning (ideally age 0) to the maximum coverage period (if they differ we have a small problem but we can then choose to calculate until the mimum insurable duration.

we can probably assume an inflation rate of 3% - since we discount both premiums the same way it wont really matter if 3% is spot on or not.

if you then compare the NPV you have a good idea of which one is cheaper. if the lifetime limit differs then you can always divide the NPV of the premium by life time limit * 1000 to get the NPV of premiums due for 1000 RM worth of lifetime limit. this also allows a certain degree of comparison.

however the laws of statistics and econometrics dictate in advance that the premium calculation for a fixed rate vs. a floating rate must be higher to allow the premium to be correct in a given percentile. and the longer into the future the higher that margin of error-allocation will be. this is the problem with riders that carry a fixed premium. the insurer has to overcharge to avoid undercharging. and since they dont know the future, someone has to cover that particular risk by means of higher premiums (i.e. the insured).

if i have time, i'll calculate the NPV of a few GI policies but right now i am pretty swamped with work so i might be slow.

Thanks PJusa for your effort to check which one is the cheapest but I'm not really interested to go to detail and argue more. I'm more interested how to help to protect people. As I said earlier, I just want to correct your statement that the fix premium is costly because I believe it is not happen to all cases. Even if you can get your policy is the cheapest in the world. Congratulation. But there is also some other factor to consider. The policy detail, the exclusion, the insurance company record, the claim process, the services, etc. The argument will never end and it is subjective.

The bottom line, are you happy with the coverage, the service? Can you afford to pay?

its not about the cheapest. the statement is that in general (and for the vast majority of all policies) a rider will have to be more expensive than the same cover from a GI policy. there might be exeptions but that should from a risk management point of view be an "accident". there might however be advantages other than monetary that justify to opt for a rider (i.e. i really want a all-in-one-policy).

i think if we look at a list of serious polcies (i.e. the ones that cover the basic criteria) then we can make a choice from that pool with respect to budget and cover. my point is just that for a 1:1 cover GI (in econometric theory and most likely in real life) will always be cheaper than the same product as a fixed premium rider.

u wan a CHEAP one can...1.2k a year u get R&B 100 and Death n TPD benefit of 70k with CI of 60k only. or u wanna get 1.8k a year n add in outpatient of 10k

i would recommend a 2.4k premium a year with on the very least 100k protection can b provided and ur R&B is 200 with outpatient of 30k and ok savings

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Added on November 8, 2010, 11:49 amPjusa n ajau

guys chill...
PJusa thanks for the comparison n ur feedback. u have a liking for GI s it meets ur needs. it's a great thing that u r informed of the different and also that you would like to know more of the various policies being offered out there. really appreciate having u s a forum fren.

ajau,
thanks for professional in handling the questions, really teaching me loads. wondering wat happened to our other thread. v champion the same things, ILP has it's benefits n flexibility and also agrees that GI has it's own benefits n flexibility. It's up to the client what they want and need

dear thread readers,
again would like to point out, that each insurance company whose providing medical cards or CI has it's restrictions or limits. pls do check which is ur flavour. some has higher annual limit and some higher lifetime limit. some has restrictions on which stage you can claim at. it's really is good that u want to check it out.

we v agents r here to help u out, do ask us if u need anything. agents r here to provide u our personal attention. u can go direct to the office n get 1 urself and when u need to claim u can go to office also urself. with an agent u can rest assured that u r focusing on getting better and being able to return to your normal life. agents are here to assist u in this.

This post has been edited by coolpajames: Nov 8 2010, 11:49 AM

lol.. don't just follow people around.. insurance mane boleh ikut2 org @ baca2 majalah.. what do u need actually?? that's all that matters..