Understanding Mutual Fund Products
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.
The first thing you need to know is the operating structure and the coordination between insurance companies and fund managers. When you pay your monthly installment to the insurance company, the company sends the money to the fund managers. Some of these mutual funds platforms offer multiple funds for you to switch from, from 10 to over 300 funds. You can allocate your payment to several different funds, and buy specific unit of funds. Then if the fund did well increase their prices, your existing units become more valuable and you become better off.
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.
The second cost is the fee for the insurance company. It is usually calculated as a percentage of your account value. The percentage is not large on first sight as well as the amount initially. However, as the account value grows, the amount of money paid out to the insurance company from your investment is enormous. And that’s why they are so wealthy.
Lastly, the fund manager takes a sip of what they earned for you, of course. This is the only cost I think reasonable. After all, they are the ones who executed the buy sell commands for you. But do not be nave and think that they really work hard to earn as much for you as possible. What they really care is to stick to the policy and make sure the growth rate does not fall below a certain level so that they keep their high pay job.
Mutual funds linked insurance products are useful to some kind of people, but definitely not everyone in the society. Before you decide to commit yourself into a policy with 20 years of payments, I recommend you really dive in to understand the cash flow and the cost involved.
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