Penny Sense » Insurance

AmBank’s What Women Want Campaign

Penny — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:56:23 +0000

Recently AmBank Group launched a corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaign called What Women Want.

This campaign is touted as the first of its kind in the industry to recruit women as financial services agent for its insurance arm, AmAssurance.

This campaign aims to recruit some 1,500 women as its agents. This campaign will commence on July 4 and will run nationwide until end of November.

For ladies who are interested, you can register for a place to take part at AmAssurance’s website.

This AmBank event was also graced by Chew Mei Fun (read her speech here).

What a creative way to recruit agents. And to position it as a corporate social responsibility event, that’s clever! Any ladies interested to go for this?

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AmBank’s What Women Want Campaign

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Are you invested in or via AIA?

Penny — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:48:42 +0000

Do you have any business dealings with AIA, the famous American insurer? If you are, take note of this important piece of news. The parent company in the US, American Internation Group (AIG) is facing liquidity crunch and is working to sell off assets to raise capital in order to protect its policyholders. Upon hearing this, I felt a little panicked because I have policies with AIA.

It’s still uncertain if AIG will pull through this ordeal and survive this bad period. But if they don’t, I don’t know how it will affect AIA here.

I don’t profess to be a financial expert, so reading the entire article of what they are going through and the potential downfall it may face as a result of a downgrade of rating, it seems like a big loom in the horizon. What is your sentiment from this article found on CNCB and reproduced below?

AIG, Facing Liquidity Crunch, Reaches Out to Regulator

Insurer American International Group, working to stave off rating downgrades and shore up the capital of its holding company, has made an unprecedented approach to the Federal Reserve seeking short-term financing, media reports said.

Chief Executive Robert Willumstad has reached out to the Fed late on Sunday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Fed normally oversees monetary policy and supervision of banks, AIG [AIG 6.74 -5.40 (-44.48%) ] was seeking the funds as a temporary measure and planned to repay the Fed with the proceeds from asset sales.

AIG officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The company, until recently the world’s biggest insurer by market capitalization, has been attempting to hammer out an emergency strategic plan after its shares fell nearly 50 percent last week on fears it faced a liquidity crisis.

AIG has been negotiating with various parties including officials from the New York Insurance Department and private equity firms as it seeks ways to free up capital, raise new capital and protect policyholders.

Regulators including New York Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo have been holed up at AIG’s New York offices over the past two days trying to hammer out a plan.

“We are working to craft a solution to protect the company and policyholders,” said a person from the New York Insurance Department, who asked not to be named.

Former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who ran the company for nearly four decades, was not involved in any of the discussions, said his spokesman, Glen Rochkind. “He repeatedly offered to assist in anyway he could,” added Rochkind.

Cash Crunch

AIG, hit by $18 billion in losses over the past three quarters from guarantees it wrote on mortgage derivatives, has had to act quickly after Standard & Poor’s said on Friday it may downgrade AIG’s ratings.

Ratings downgrades could force AIG to post up to $14.5 billion more in collateral, according to a regulatory filing last month.

Downgrades could also be detrimental to AIG’s insurance business, since some policies carry clauses that nullify a contract in the event of downgrades below a certain level.

Over the weekend, the insurer has been working on a three-part plan involving asset sales, shifting regulated capital from the insurance operations to the holding company, and working with private equity investors, said a person familiar with the negotiations.

Parties in capital-raising talks with AIG included buyout firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and J.C. Flowers, another person familiar with the talks said.

An AIG spokesman earlier confirmed the company was evaluating a wide range of options, including asset sales.

Media reports have said that one of the companies on the block was AIG’s highly profitable aircraft leasing arm, but the spokesman declined to confirm this was the case.

In late June, AIG said the unit, International Lease Finance Corp, would remain part of AIG.

AIG was founded in China 89 years ago. In the years since, largely under Greenberg’s watch, it grew into one of the world’s largest insurers, spanning 130 countries and territories and serving 74 million customers.

Greenberg stepped down in 2005, in the midst of an accounting scandal. His successor, Martin Sullivan, was replaced by Willumstad in June after investors grew disgruntled over its three quarters of losses.

Greenberg owns or controls about 12 percent of AIG’s stock, making him the largest shareholder.

Copyright 2008 Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Lots of free personal accident insurance given out

Penny — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:27:46 +0000

If you are looking for a personal accident insurance policy, you will be happy to know that you may not necessarily need to fork out your own hard-earned money to purchase it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but lots of companies are giving away such policies for free, albeit just for a year. But if you can save your pockets for a year, what’s the harm?

I think I have 3 free personal accident policies to date. I say “I think” because I really can’t keep a tab on them just because they came for free. How did I get so many for free, you wonder. Just by luck, really.

One of them was given by a bank that issued me a new credit card. The other was a loan taken up some time back with yet another bank and it was nice of them to think that I should need such a policy. I also received a free policy for signing up with a company to renew my car insurance. So there you have it, all the avenues for free insurance.

If you are not about to sign up for any of the above, fret not. Not only financial institutions are giving out such policies for free. Today, Digi announced that they are giving their customers a RM10,000 PA coverage. Five million of Digi’s subscribers are said to benefit from this. Are you a Digi customer? If you are, look out for that freebie.

You can read about it from The Star Online, just click on this direct link to the news.

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Lots of free personal accident insurance given out

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Bad record if you skip your medical check

Penny — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:19:00 +0000

Recently my colleagues and I applied to purchase a medical plans from an insurer. The insurer is really strict and required all of us to do medical checks before they decide on approving or rejecting our applications. My medical check involves a blood test.

I’m terrified of needles and I’ve thought of maybe just scrapping my plans to buy from this company and go with another insurer. I was told that if I skip the test, then the application would be rejected due to my failure to product the result of the medical test to the insurer. I commented that I didn’t mind and I would just find another company to buy from.

Apparently, this would be a big mistake! It seems that once I am rejected by any insurer, this will be recorded and my chances of approval for future applications would be jeopardised. It’s something like a black mark system.

Hearing that, it changed my mind about skipping the test. I definitely don’t want to be “blacklisted” by the insurers over the fear of a needle. It’s not worth it! If you did not know this, now you do. So don’t make this mistake like I nearly did!

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Bad record if you skip your medical check

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Life insurance for kids?

Penny — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:55:00 +0000

At where I work, an insurance company recently came to offer some very affordable products. We were introduced to their medical plan which I wrote about here and life insurance policy.

Life insurance is normally quite expensive, especially if you go for whole life policies. What they offered was very reasonable where affordability is concerned. They also threw in an attractive feature where 60% of the premium paid would be put into savings. When the policy is due to be paid, not only would you get the covered sum, you also get back the 60% savings plus all interests earned.

This policy was also made available to our children. The difference between the adult policy and the children policy is that the latter will save 70% of the premium paid. Both are tax exempted in the annual tax assessment.

All sounds good so far and I was very tempted by the low premiums offered. I’ve been thinking now for 3 days whether my family should purchase this policy. Then today a colleague of mine brought up a good point. She questioned why we should be buying a life policy for children when our children do not have dependents. The whole objective of buying a policy is to ensure that our dependants will be taken care of in the event something happens to us. It doesn’t work the other way around, does it?

My colleague put this question to the insurance company and they too agreed with her. I think they should then tweak and sell this plan as an education policy rather than to classify it under a life plan. Makes more sense that way.

Now that she’s made me see some light, I’m going just for the medical plan.

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Life insurance for kids?

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AmBank’s What Women Want Campaign

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