Singapore Insurance

AXA has recently launched a new Critical Illness protection plan similar to Great Eastern's Early Payout CriticalCare plan. AXA's Early Payout Living Enhancer offers the following: 1. Expedited payout at early stages of critical illness, so you will not need to dip into your savings to pay for early medical treatment. 2. Extensive coverage of up to 60 medical conditions, which supplements your existing critical illness plans. 3. Exemption of waiting period between multiple claims so you are well protected in the event of multiple critical illnesses, up to 100% of the Sum Assured. 4. Extra death benefit of S$15,000 to help defray the immediate living expenses of your loved ones.

Early Payout Critical Care from Great Eastern can be purchased as a standalone critical illness plan or as a rider to one of their plans. Some of the key features of the Early Payout Critical Care are as follows: 1. Standalone plan or rider with varying terms (6 years till age 75). Entry age is 1 to 65. 2. Able to opt from $50,000 to $1 million in coverage. 3. Early payout is based on differing severity levels for the 30 critical illnesses which are grouped into 3 groups of Severity 25, Severity 50 and Severity 100. 4. There are limits to what can be claimed under Severity 25 and Severity 50. 5. Possible for multiple claims across unrelated illnesses without any waiting period The advantages of the Early Payout Critical Care introduced by Great Eastern are as follows: 1. First plan in Singapore to offer payouts at earlier stages of cancer. 2. Multiple lump sum payouts at different stages of the same critical illness or across different critical illness. 3. No minimum waiting period bet

Below is my analysis of the one time redemption offer made by Great Eastern to policy holders of GreatLink Choice: 1. Great Eastern will definitely be making a loss from it. Even if not all policy holders take up the one time redemption offer, Great Eastern still stands to lose a huge sum of money. This though is done to prevent any further damage to the company name that might arise should policy holders follow the way of those who were affected by the Lehman mini bonds. Should policy holders have the chance to complain to MAS, the investigations could land some agents into trouble and might also tarnish the name of Great Eastern. 2. Whether this is a good public relations (PR) move remains to be seen. It most probably will be as clients will feel that Great Eastern truly cares about the interests of its clients. On the whole, the public will view it as a good move made by an insurance company versus how the banks have treated their clients in the Lehman saga. 3. Agents affect

IN A stunning development, about 18,000 Great Eastern Life customers who bought investment products similar to the ill-fated Lehman Minibonds will get all of their money back. And they did not have to ask for it. The move by GE Life, which will cost the insurer a whopping $250 million, is purely voluntary. The products in question are called GreatLink Choice (GLC) - a series of single-premium investment-linked insurance products sold in five tranches between 2005 and 2007, netting $594 million in investments. Like Lehman Minibonds, GLC was linked to a class of complex financial instruments whose value has been badly hit by diving financial markets. So despite diversifying the risk and building in various loss-protection features, the values of the GLC plans have plummeted between 40 and 80 per cent. 'Great Eastern understands that these steep discounts have given rise to concerns among GLC policyholders,' group chief executive Ng Keng Hooi said in a statement on Friday. 'To