facebookA financial advisor offered a investment plan which has 66% welcome bonus on my initial investment and covers me 101% of the amount if I pass away.. is this worth it? - Seedly

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Anonymous

28 Sep 2020

Robo-Advisors

A financial advisor offered a investment plan which has 66% welcome bonus on my initial investment and covers me 101% of the amount if I pass away.. is this worth it?

I was told that if I invest 12k annually for 10 years I will receive 7920 (66% bonus) on my initial investment.

The annual fees for this plan is 2.5% but he explained because of the welcome bonus, u are only actually paying 0.7% in 10 years

If I pass away, my family can go to the comp and claim 101% of my investment unlike investing on my own or through robo-advisors

Any like minded person like myself who thinks the welcome bonus is a plus point? My investment becomes 19,920. A big boost..

Discussion (15)

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Hey a lot of these answers centers around the assumption that this is an ILP. the question clearly states that it's an investment plan. I can't speak for other companies but Great Eastern investment plans do not charge for insurance Etc. but still has a death benefit payout of account value or 110%. They also provide a surrender value table which has factored in all the fees/costs to you as an investor, and you can see the projected amount you will receive based on a lower and higher projected return rate. It's very straightforward and honestly, people have really got to to stop overthinking and assuming these companies are out to get you. Whether your agent gets high comission or not, is besides the point. If youre happy with the projected returns, what's wrong with advisors being paid for their hard work? Win-win situation. And tbh, some commission doesnt even cover the work they got cut out for them, because these clients end up being long term clients, and it's not like advisors charge hourly fees for answering all their questions.

No free lunch in this world. There are some things to be reminded of:

  1. Fees. It may vary somewhat across different insurers but the core of it is like this - monthly admin fees, policy fees, mortality charges, fund management fees.

There are also surrender charges. Want to surrender or do a partial withdrawal in the first couple of years? You get back ZERO. Can't afford to commit to the lock in period? Surrender charges will be drawn down from your account value for every missed premium.

  1. Everything is non guaranteed, except fees. So if you or your agent doesn't monitor the fund performance, it will be very likely that you will get back much less than what you put in, especially after deducting fees.

  2. ILPs are advisor driven - you rely on the 'expertise' of the agent serving you. And most that I've come across do not know enough about the funds they promote. And even need to rely on corporate staff to tell them about things found in the fund prospectus. Some of them don't even understand fully the structure of the product they sell as if they fell asleep during training. I've come across many agents who don't know how long it takes to do fund switch and want to push through to get dividend distribution before cut off. And this is just a simple example.

Name me one agent who reads and fully understand fund prospectus before recommending that fund. This is meant to be READ and UNDERSTOOD by all, both agent and client.

  1. Don't forget, core business of insurers is to provide insurance aka protection. Transfer of risk to them to account for unforeseen circumstances in life.

Consider these before you invest with an insurer next time.

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My short answer would be, if things are too good to be true, it most probably might be!...

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