The Ministry of Health (MOH) recently shared with all life insurers that MOH has been receiving complaints on the unprofessional sales and marketing of Medisave Approved Insurance Plans.
Previously, I have wrote about this topic at length, such as the Dangers of Switching Shield Plans, and the Twisting of Shield Plans.
As a result, MOH wants all insurers and their distributors to be more compliant on the financial advisory process.
The following are some guidelines to adhere by:
- No misrepresentation or unprofessional selling of Medisave Approved Insurance Plans.
- Ensuring full disclosure of :
- The benefits and features of the plans.
- The nature of supplement plans/riders, and ElderShield supplements. These are purely optional and should not be portrayed as Ministry of Health (MOH) Approved or Central Provident Fund (CPF) approved products.
- Highlighting to clients that they are subjected to underwriting whenever there is a switch or replacement of plan. This may have the following possible disadvantages :
- Clients may not be insurable at standard terms.
- Clients may have to pay a different premium.
- Terms & conditions of the new policy may be different, such as pre-existing conditions being excluded in the new plan.
I would say that the cause of this problem is a mixture of both ethical as well as competency issues among insurance agents and financial advisers. Shield plans pay low commissions, thus many people do not devote a lot of time to understanding them well.
And this thing has probably been going on for a very long time, just that nowadays people have become more aware and thus there are more complaints to MOH.