JustinNg.Sg
Currently viewing the tag: "Insurance"
I have not been blogging about my insurance experience for quite sometime. Lately I had been experiencing several claims experience.
In one of the claims experience, my client mentioned that it is tough to be an insurance agent as we get to hear the first hand experience of someone struggling through medical condition.
Within my insurance career in the past 3 years, this is the first time that I process critical illness claim. Although they are not my relatives, but the impact is still the same. Hearing and seeing the family members going through mental and financial struggles makes me feel that I have the need to help them to get the claim done.
Retired or Not?
Personally, I do not feel it is compulsory to pay severance to retirement age workers. If they are at their retirement age, they should be retiring gracefully and not to be dependent on companies that they work for.
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The trend of Singaporean moving house after a few years is getting more popular with young family or young adults. Even for me (who does not own one yet), have the intention of buying a house and upgrade it along the way.
Everybody knows that when we buy a flat from HDB, we must to purchase Housing Insurance before we can take up a loan from HDB or other private bank loan.
Most of my client who bought a HDB flat get their home insurance, HPS (Home Protection Scheme) from HDB. Here how HDB works, they will ask us to purchase HPS during the 2nd appointment, and when we asked them whether it is compulsory, they replied YES it is.
This is very misleading. It is compulsory to have Housing Insurance to apply for loan but NOT compulsory to have HPS.
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Work Injury
I’ve come across companies that only want to get through the application to get cheap labour for their company. In applying for foreign workers to come into Singapore, the company got to have a indemnity bond, a foreign worker medical insurance and Workmen compensation.
That is the minimum to get the foreign workers on board with work permit.
However, there are other types of passes for foreign workers. I’ve highlighted this to this particular company about how they should cover all their employees with at least Work Injury Compensation to protect themselves from being sue by employees when they are injured, and it is unfair that they only cover the foreign workers with work permit.
If the foreign workers with work permit are injured, yes, they can claim money back from insurance company. Likewise, for other employees if they are injured, then it will depends whether the company wants to pay for the hospital fees (which most of the time they will if not you can sue them). If the employees get into a more serious injury, the company might sack the employees as the employees is unable to perform what they are hired for, and the company can just give an additional 1 month salary to the employees.
All I can say that, it will be hard time for the employees.
What is insurance?
Definition by Wikipedia is in “chimglish” which many might not understand.
Here is my version
Insurance is an asset to us. It create immediate asset of what we can earn in 10 years or more into an instant thought.
If we took 10 years to earn $200,000 as our asset for our family or ourselves. What insurance do is to create the asset instantly, creating $200,000 to ensure that we can receive it no matter what circumstances. After all, 10 years later we will still get back around $200,000.
PS: No matter what circumstances will also depends on what insurance you are looking at.
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CHICAGO – MAMMOGRAMS should begin at 40 for women with an average risk of breast cancer and by 30 for high-risk women, according to guidelines released on Monday by two groups that specialise in breast imaging, contradicting controversial guidelines from a US advisory panel last year.
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I would strongly encourage ladies to read about this article above by strait times.
Mammograms showing a normal breast (left) and a breast cancer (right).
Breast Cancer is the number cancer killer for ladies. Not saying that men won’t get it, it is just that men usually have higher chance to have Prostate Cancer (more than 90% of the men will have Prostate Cancer, it is just that they are not cancerous).
Apart from having mammograms, ladies should always do self examine on their breast to see if there is any lump. I have been helping Breast Cancer Foundation to raise money to help the needy income ladies who is suffering from Breast Cancer and it is really not a easy process for the patient to go through. Having daily or weekly self examination done it allow early detection in Breast Cancer and giving a higher percentage for curing it.
I still have quite a number of booklet for breast self examination to give away. Drop me an email if you want it or you can always visit Breast Cancer Foundation for more information.
PS: Breast Cancer Foundation is helping to create awareness and educate people on Breast Cancer.
Another reason why you should be getting health insurance as early as possible.
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/TechandScience/Story/STIStory_473719.html
In my previous post on When should I get my health insurance. I have mentioned that getting health insurance as early as possible. And in the above article, John suffered from genetic disease at the age of 1. Genetic disease means that it is pass on in the family, but it might not show up perhaps at a later stage.
Getting a health insurance early provide you and your child the coverage first. If the health insurance is bought later, there might be a chance that insurer does not want to insure the child. Even if the insurer takes up the child as the insured, there will be exclusion.
The bottom line is get your health insurance as early as possible while you are still in your pink health. This is more important than all other policy that you have.
Come across this commercial recently.
Thailand insurance commercial is always very creative. And behind every commercial, it always bring across an important message.
From my experience, many clients firstly tell me that they have a lot of insurance. Which I totally agree, as I do have a lot of insurance. And many times when I look through their insurance portfolio, there are duplicates insurances like having a hospital medical plans with 100% coverage and a hospital reimbursement plan (old plan). They do not even know that they are paying extra for things that they do not need. Or they have change their focus from protection to saving which their previous plan is not inline with their goals.
Review what you have and make sure it suit what you need.
Thanks to @GuyKawasaki for his tweet about American v. British health care.
This has brought my attention to this particular article – Comparing US healthcare costs with Europe.
To relate this back to Singapore, I realize that Singapore Healthcare is much more advance and provide us with up to 100% claim for hospital and surgical fees. Some even allow us to claim for the fees if we seek overseas treatment. What’s more important is that Singapore Healthcare provides us with a much comprehensive coverage. As every insurer has slight different in their coverage, I would not dwell on it.
Drop me an email if you want to find out more on the differences.
HEALTH INSURANCE – I will consider this as the most important insurance among every other insurance that a person will have.
It is extremely important to get health insurance as early as possible. I have already got it for my whole family and had already highlighted the importance to relatives and friends.
Why do we need to get it so early?
If you are parents, I would suggest this to be the first insurance plan for your child. All parents would like their child to be healthy, chubby and grow up to be a big strong kid. But sometime things don’t go according to your wish. Your child might suffer for early childhood disease which has not yet been discovered by the doctor. And most of the disease might discover in a couple of months or years later. I’m blogging this now after watching World Guinness Record on TV in Channel 5, on the biggest size baby weighing 55kg at age 3. He is even heavier than me at the age of 3. I cannot imagine what he will be when he is 18.
As an adult, I believe that we should have social responsibility. We should not burden others like our parents, children, relatives and friends if we are borne down by illness or accident. At the same time, we should also protect ourselves from getting into heavy debts when our love ones or dependents are borne down by illness or accident.
Each and every one of us should take up the health insurance by ourselves and not leave the responsibility to others.
Stay tune for the next blog on how to choose a health insurance if you have not done so.
