Why should a person invest through insurance companies? Is "an inability to invest by themselves due to lack of knowledge" the only reason?

Hi anon,

As a financial advisor myself, I see no reason to invest through an insurance company's policy.

Insurance is there to provide you guarantees. Investments have none. Lack of knowledge is no reason to go to an insurance company to invest (unless you want a guaranteed return through an endowment or annuity). With no knowledge, and no desire to pick up any, you can still speak with an advisor who is able to manage your funds with his knowledge and skillset. I'm managing my clients stocks and unit trusts portfolios directly and none of that involves an insurance company's policies.

So no, there's really no need to go to an insurance company's policies to invest. If you want to invest, invest. If you want to insure, insure. Don't mix both of them together.

Nobody should invest via insurances companies. However, if they would have a cheap online brokerage branch, then why not?

All these finance products of insurance companies have a difficult to understand stucture so the retail customer cannot really evaluate the risk/benefit ratio.