064 Medical policies lapsed!!!

I just realised, yesterday, that me and my wife's medical card policies were due or lapsed. I know they are due somewhere in Jul and is expecting the renewal notice. However, none came. So, I called the insurance company to do enquiry. Yah, they were due or lapsed because of late payment.

So, I made a visit to insurance company, told them the story of our policies. The staff said we can continue our policies by making the payments. The renewal notice is sent out by HQ and it seems like their system has some problem doing so. Many clients has faced the same problem and made complain.

Indeed, we have been with this insurance company for many years. This is the first time we do not receive our medical card policies renewal notice.

For our case, the insurance company accept our renewal because of the special reason. If it is the client who delay payment and cause the policy to lapse, the client needs to fill in a health questionnaire for the insurance company to do underwriting. This may place the client in a disadvantage position because the new underwriting may exclude certain, most needed, coverage.

Therefore, I think we, as client, need to do something to protect ourselves. Medical policies is one of the policies that I will not take risk to lapse.

What can we do?

1. Keep a list of all insurance policies and their renewal dates. The list can be in a sheet of paper or a phone calendar app.

2. IF possible, authorized for auto renewal through auto-debit or credit card.

3. Do a annual policies review. Do it on a date easy to remember - birthday, anniversary, specific public holiday etc.

063 How to claim a deceased's shares?

Mary's uncle passed away few years ago without leaving a will. His wife managed to transfer the assets to her name. However, one asset was left out. They are the shares Mary's uncle bought before he get married.

Mary wants to know how to deal with the shares.

We went to the securities form to enquire on this. The staff said the family needs to present a Letter of Administration, Death Certificate and Administrator's NRIC for them to get necessary documents from Bursa. When the securities firm received documents from Bursa, the Administrator will need to go to securities firm to do the necessary transfer.

But since this shares was left out during the previous Letter of Administration application, a fresh application of Letter of Administration is needed. For this, the family needs to engage a lawyer to file the papers. Costs will be involved. Therefore, it is better to know the value of the shares - is it worth the efforts.

That aside, this reminds us the importance of a will. A will is a proper document to spell out clearly the distribution of assets to intended beneficiaries. The deceased's family will get things done faster when will is present.

Apart from it, a proper record of assets is also important. Trustee company will normally give testator (person who make the will) a personal inventory booklet. The purpose is for the testator to list an updated list of assets. If the testator finds it a hassle to do so, he may photocopy a copy of all his assets and keep together with the booklet.

Inform family member where the will and booklet is kept. If the will is kept with trustee company, it is importance for family members to know so. If the will and booklet are kept by testator, not only it is important for family member to know the location, equally important is it must be properly kept - to avoid intentional / unintentional damage.

062 Market Data - Week Ended 28/8/2015

US Market

 

Europe

Asia

 

 

Commodities

061 What to do during volatile market?

For the past one year, investing has been quite challenging. Malaysia was hurt by oil price slump end 2014, then now we are facing falling market and falling ringgit. Local unit trust has been hurt, some quite bad, by them.

In times like this, it is understandable to see client's unwillingness to continue investing. But is this wise? What should we do?

1. Sit back and review on hand portfolio

We should take an updated portfolio and their values. Sit back and looked at them. Market has changed, so should out portfolio be changed accordingly. If the portfolio is too concentrated in local equity market, think of diversifying into local bond, oversea equity, oversea bond, and cash portion. Go for more bond portion if you feel uncomfortable with equity volatility. But do not totally get out of equity market. We do not know when will market rebound, so we do not want to miss it.

2. Start a regular savings plan

As an investor, we should be happy to see equity on sales. But as human, we tends to feel uneasy seeing our portfolio lose value. It is equally not easy to put in money, large sum I mean, into equity in time like this. We can reduce our fear by starting a regular savings plan (RSP). The fund house will deduct a small sum of money from your savings account when the date approached. Sometime you will buy some high price units, some lower price units. By doing so, RSP not only will help to lower our average costs, it can help to accumulate wealth bit by bit.

3. Venture into oversea funds

Not all countries will react to market condition in the same way. Some may go up, some may go down. A little home work done and you will find some funds still perform. Example, when ringgit depreciates against another currency, try to look for opportunity in that country. Maybe their stock market and currency exchange rate make it attractive to invest some.

4. Study

Tough time is great time to learn new things. When times are good, we place ourselves in comfort zone. Take this opportunity to learn new funds, new strategies, new investment types. All these will us decide our future investment direction. Probably we have invested based on other people's opinions. Perhaps it's time we re-think are those funds suitable for our risk profile.

Talk to your consultant regarding your concerns and seeks his advice on the next course of actions.

060 Academic requirements to enrol into CFP course

I am considered earlier batch of CFP students. To enrol into a CFP course, the academic requirement then was a minimum of SPM. Then in 2014, I heard FPAM is going to lift the requirement to a minimum Degree holder. So, it was imposed from 2015.

This new requirements makes it harder to recruit new students. However, just recently (Aug 2015), I heard FPAM has relaxed the academic requirement to a minimum Diploma holder with a 5-year experience.

This is good news indeed. And it should be welcome, especially, those has been in unit trust industry for more than 5 years and is thinking of upgrading his career path.

With CFP, a student can apply for CMSRL license to become a licensed financial planner under a financial planning firm to practice. The scope of services he can provide to his clients widened to more than single product from a single company. He will be looking at improving clients financial shape to a better one.

The CFP course used to be a 6 modules course, it has been compressed into 4 modules since 2015 as well. So, it is faster for a student to complete his study and start practicing.

It is not easy to get a CFP service provider in Johor Bahru. So, we look upon whoever interested to venture into CFP course or financial planner career to contact us.