Have you ever received calls from financial planners from insurance companies? What do you think about their financial planning service? I believe that there are many professional financial planners who genuinely help people to better utilize their money. However, I believe even more out there are merely salespersons and all they want to achieve is to persuade you into buying their products. Today, I would like to explain more about one of the most popular products that they sell – mutual fund linked insurance products.
These kinds of product are getting more and more popular because they can generate large sum of income. The investors believe that help them save and earn the sum of money for their needs like retirement, therefore they are willing to put in a large sum of money first. When an investor pays his payment to the insurance company, the company transfers the sum to the fund managers. Some platforms allow you to allocate your payments to several different funds. The insurance company is effectively breaking down the mutual fund units into smaller blocks so that small investors can participate. The fund managers gather the money and invest it on financial assets like stock. When they earn in buying and selling or the worth of the underlying assets increase, then the price of the fund unit rises accordingly. And on your account statement you will see increases in your account values.
But for me I don’t prefer this kind of products due to its high cost. You may not notice that when you look at the brochures or listen to the presentations, because they deliberately play it down. The cost structures are complicated and carefully calculated by actuaries to ensure the gain of the insurance company. The sales man is so good at presenting the numbers; it would sound like the product is a cash generating unit and the cost is so low its negligible. Nothing could be further from truth. In fact, one of the main costs of the product goes to the salesperson. Because the product usually needs fixed annuity payments and the insurance companies have tactics to ensure the continuity of the policy, they are confident to pay out as much as half of all the premiums they receive in the first year.
On your monthly statement may find that the account value is not exactly the amount of money you own. There is another value called the surrender value usually printed in little text. That’s the real amount you own which is the amount you get when you stop the account and get back your money. The fee for the insurance company is calculated as a percentage of your account value. Therefore, they would want a higher account value and a lower surrender value. The cost percentage is usually not high apparently. But if you try to do a spreadsheet simulation, you will see how much of the money generated from your capital goes to the insurance company. It may surprise you.
The final main fee you’ll be paying with your installments is the management fee for the fund managers. They manage your money, try to give a competitive growth rate and they take a percentage of you capital, hopefully covered by the value increase.
Mutual funds linked insurance products are useful to some kind of people, but definitely not everyone in the society. Before you decide to commit yourself into a policy with 20 years of payments, I recommend you really dive in to understand the cash flow and the cost involved.
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