More than Insurance

COMMENTS POSTED IN MY BLOG

Very good that the new Income management has closed down the loans unit and some of the other non-core businesses like line dance and snow city. This will allow for better pay to be offered to the rest of the employees.

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Income should close all the non-core businesses and refocus on insurance. This will improve its bottom line. Money saved, use it to improve the skills of its agents who are lacking badly in this area.

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Rubbish, The Income that maintains the loans policies and other value added services was the Income that has a heart! This is very lacking in the society of today.

Nowadays Income spent lots of money advertising full colour full page advertisements that does not add any value to the policyholders at all. As Mr. Tan has said, this takes away money from the Par fund and reduces distributions to policyholders. At least the other services add value to Income policy holders lives and help them in times of need.

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REPLY:

When I was CEO of NTUC Income, the "more than insurance" businesses were run on the following principles:

* they have to give value to the policyholders
* they should be runned on cost recovery, with a margin to meet the expenses

Some of the businesses were successful, including the home services (ie referral of contractors) and car sharing. Others were not successful, and were scaled down or closed down during my time.

Some activities (such as line-dancing) cost very little, and give a lot of awareness and positive pubicity. It is a form of low-cost advertising.