Investing Investment Funds
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.
However, you also need to understand the cost structure of these investment linked products before you can decide whether they are really suitable for you. Firstly, why do these products gain great market shares in a comparably short period of time? It is because of the effort and time spent by our brilliant salespersons. A well trained salesperson can sell the most ridiculous product to the weirdest man in the world. Trust me, I’ve met them personally. So what drives them to do it so hard? Yes, you guessed it right. Money. These investment linked products always provide the salespersons with enormous amount of commission. As high as 50% of your first year payment could possibly entirely goes to the pockets of the person who handed you the pen for signature. What I can say is there is nothing you can do about it in a capitalism society.
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.
In conclusion, mutual fund linked insurance can help you invest in mutual funds with a relatively small capital. But the cost is high because multiple parties are involved. It is left to the reader to decide whether this kind of products suit their needs.
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Simon Wong :: Jan.31.2010 :: Investing :: No Comments »