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Twisting the medical insurance in XXX |
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Written by Wilfred Ling
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Saturday, 02 April 2011 |
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An individual had his medical insurance replaced by an unethical financial adviser in XXX. This was a complain made to Today Online HERE. The customer already had a NTUC Enhanced Incomeshield Basic with a rider. This plan covers B1 restructured ward without deductible and possibility no co-insurance. The financial consultant at XXX replaced his policy with an as-charged shield plan meant for private hospital. It appears there was no rider being attached. The victim’s son appears to have exercise free-look upon discovering his dad had bought an unsuitable product. My comments:
I have quite a number of clients who were also taken advantage of. Their as-charged medical insurance was also replaced by other insurance agents. The disadvantage of replacing an existing medical insurance is the exclusion of pre-existing condition – even those that are unknown to the client. That is why there has being many complains of insurance company rejecting claims. Very often, it is due to pre-existing conditions. Without a thorough fact find, it is possible for a financial adviser to harm the client significantly. Therefore, even ethical financial adviser can cause much harm to the client if he or she does not conduct a thorough fact find. Because a thorough fact find tends to incur lots of time especially when the client does not have the information at hand, there is a tendency to ‘gross’ over the fact find. A half-baked fact find is as good as no fact find. If the individual above exercised his free look, his trouble may not be over. It is not uncommon that the free look period is 60 days for a shield plan. If the free look was exercised at the 59th day, the previous shield plan would have being terminated already because CPF would auto terminate the previous shield plan when a CPF deduction is made. It is highly likely that a CPF deduction is made by the 59th day. This means that the client is left only with the Medishield Basic because the previous private-intergrated shield plan was already terminated and the new one was also terminated due to the free-look. The focus on sales will always cause the financial adviser to harm their clients – intentionally or unintentionally.
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