Martin Lee @ Sg

What is Industry Practice For Insurance Bonus Statements?

Martin Lee

In response to the letter from Tan Aik Meng about misleading insurance bonus statements, Great Eastern Life has replied that their statement follows industry practice:

Bonus statement is industry practice

It is industry practice for insurers to provide an illustration for the death benefits and surrender values of the policies, which are usually projected over a 20-year duration.

So what exactly is the industry practice?

Do other insurers provide only projected values, or do they also provide current values as well?

Are their statements clear, or do you have to locate and read the fine print to know what they are referring to?

I’m also curious to find out how the other insurance companies do it. If I can get hold of samples of bonus statements from the other insurance companies, I will be able to do a comparison and share with everyone here.

This open comparison might encourage the insurance companies to improve on their statements.

Perhaps we can even ask MAS or LIA to comment and come up with a minimum standard.

If you have any life insurance bonus statement (whole life or endowment policies but not investment-linked) of the following companies and wish to help me in this research, please email your attachment to me at martin@www.martinlee.sg.

Of course, you can remove your private information first. This can be easily done by covering sensitive portions with a piece of paper before you scan the statement.

Hope to get some response from all of you!