Bonus projections of life insurance policies

The bonus projections of life insurance policies are not guaranteed. They depend on the future investment yield earned by the insurance company.

Long, long ago, the bonuses were distributed yearly to the policyholders based on sound actuarial principles. During the old days, you can trust the bonuses are computed fairly, and reflect the underlying economic conditions.

In the early 1990s, life insurance companies in Singapore started to "manipulate" the bonuses. They pay lower bonuses during the earlier years and jacked-up bonuses from age 60 or 65. The policy appears to give a good yield for the long term. As these bonuses are not guaranteed, the policyholder has to wait for a long time to find out if the higher bonuses will be paid. (In many cases, the actual bonuses paid were lower).

Many policies were sold on the basis of these projections. Insurance agents used the bonus projections to sell the concept that the policyholder can stop paying premiums after a certain number of years, called the "critical year". In many cases, the policyholders had to pay the premium for many years more than the projected "critical year". This affected many tens of thousands of policyholders.

I used the term "manipulated" because the bonuses do not reflect the real yield on the investments during the years. There is lack of clarity of the principles on which the bonuses were calculated.

These bonus projections are used to hide the high cost of marketing the life insurance products, which reduces the yield of the policy considerably. The effective yield is less than 2% in most cases, lower than the future rate of inflation. The policyholder is guaranteed to lose out on buying a life insurance policy.

Lesson: Do not trust this type of haphazard bonus projection. Do not trust insurance companies that offer these type of "manipulated" products.

Read this FAQ on how to invest your savings for the future:
http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/savings.html