As what I was told, Royal Skandia holds 60% of the global market share for the portfolio bond. Swiss Life also has their portfolio bond and if I am not wrong, they too will be marketing it in Singapore. If these are true, IFAs will have 3 portfolio bonds to choose from! Hooray!! I hope they will compete on pricing so as to drive the cost of portfolio bond down. The arsenal of tools available for IFAs is really amazing. (Wasn’t it not too long ago that IFAs were so glad for IFAST and Navigator provide the mega Unit Trusts platform? Seem that IFAST and Navigator are like ice-age to me now! ) The portfolio bond is an ancient tool actually but it only appeared in Singapore (officially) just last year when Friends Provident obtained their license to distribute their products in Singapore. Now this year suddenly we will have 3 portfolio bond! Cool. I think this is a very good time for them to come here as the financial market is exploding, where so many high networth clients from overseas are pouring their wealth in Singapore. Also since estate duty is abolish it means people don’t need to park their money in property to get high exemption limit. People can now park their money in any assets in Singapore without any estate duty.  For those who are unfamiliar with portfolio bond, it is a “bespoke” instrument that can hold (a) bonds (b) equities (c) unit trusts (d) hedge funds (e) structure notes and (f) fixed deposits. The amazing thing is we are not limited to the insurers’ own funds. Currently, none of Friends Provident own unit-linked fund are permitted to be sold in Singapore anyway. So I can put say (1) ETF (2) Hedge Fund (3) Fixed Deposit and (4) Unit Trusts into the portfolio bond as a truly diversified portfolio. Is it amazing?

BTW, Royal Skandia will be targeting at the high networth individuals. I think this makes sense since there are so much more interesting things that can be done for this market and at least there are so much less restrictions imposed on advisers which in turn translates to greater creative ideas. I've created a mailing list for this class of investors so that I can broadcast these interesting ideas & products. I hope the mailing list recepients will not be too confused with so many choices!

(This blog entry is not meant for a recruitment advert but I just cannot resist the temptation to say this to all FAs working in the banks and insurance agencies that the IFA market is on a "multiple-year bull run" with so many things happening. Unlike stock market bull run, this bull run will only happen once in a life time. The action is in the IFA industry!)