Thursday, January 1, 2009

One of those traps in Investment Link Insurance

You probably know investment link insurance has many elements in it.  One of the elements in it is ofcourse insurance coverage.  While you can buy the 'cheapest' insurance coverage through investment link, do you know that your 'investment' element is badly affected in order to pay for the 'cheapest' coverage ?  

Investment Link is a type of products you should consider if you do not know much about investment.  And if you do not know much about investment, you should at least know Dollar Cost Averaging.  Lets review Dollar Cost Averaging and Buy Low Sell High concept !  Basically you accumulate more units during down trend and less units during up trend.
In investment link policy, your annual premium is NOT directly credited into your account.  It will first be used to deduct your protection charges monthly.  The protection charges may remain the same but the way it is calculated is NOT a dollar to dollar deduction.  It will use the market price of your investment to deduct the number of units in order to match the premium payment.
 For example;

Premium Payment NeededMarket PriceNumber of Units Needed
$100
$1
100
$100
$2
50
$100
$0.50
200

So instead of deducting $100 consistently from your account, it is deducting the number of units.

You can see that during a down trend ie. when market price is $0.50 you lost 200 units.  And during an up trend ie. when market price is $5 you lost only 50 units.

So instead of accumulating MORE units during down trend,
 you LOST more units.

In long run, you are strategically put into a 'losing' position while the insurance company has a HIGHER chance to earn MORE of your money.  Because you are getting into a position that is OPPOSITE of Dollar Cost Averaging !

Below shows a Sample of an actual detail list of an invesment link policy, click on image to view in bigger  size.