Manulife International

Closed Thread
Page 3 of 4 FirstFirst 1 2 3 4 LastLast
  1. #21

    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    14,414
    Quote Originally Posted by marcuslai:
    to be fair, insurance / financial planning products help quite a few. if u don't need what they are selling, its quite alright. but they are not selling magic beans.
    Sounds like somebody here works in the industry then! So which one is it?


  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by KnowItAll:
    >> Manulife is a big company, I can't believe they would go that low! They're acting like a fly-by-night MLM company!

    That is what most of the so called "financial planning" industry is like these days.

    Seriously. They spam my mailbox and disturb me when I'm sleeping . Of course, I have to admit that I realised all this only after I went to meet them and discovered the whole deal. Anyways! better late than never. And, I am happy that many others who have read or will read this thread will know exactly what's in store for them and save themselves.

  3. #23

    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    301
    Quote Originally Posted by hkworkingholida:
    It is a top insurance company in HK
    And that's the disturbing thing. The very minimal base salary and/or only comission based compensation has been the preserve of the dodgy or very new financial planning organisations for years. Not typical to see this type of practice with well regarded insutitutions like Manulife. But this we will give you capital that you have to repay to setup your Manulife FP business takes the cake. If they're after franchisees then advertise it as such.

  4. #24

    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Posts
    12,383
    Quote Originally Posted by marcuslai:
    to be fair, insurance / financial planning products help quite a few. if u don't need what they are selling, its quite alright. but they are not selling magic beans.
    Sure, they do help quite a lot of people, but unfortunately the industry in Hong Kong is plagued with fly by night operators.

    We are plagued by insurance salesmen who will spend hours spamming forums and fighting with us .. "we're helping your users" and yet they're not willing to commit to advertising dollars. You have to wonder.. what that person's time is really worth on a per hour basis if they spend a couple of hours a day spamming various forums in the guise of "business development".

    We have turned down some *large* financial groups who wanted to advertise, simply because their approach is geared towards cold calling and volume sales.. they're same idiots who will hire out 500 calls a day to penny a call type call centers in the Phillipines ... "Mr KnowItAll, I'm calling on behalf of Joe Arsehole who would like to make an appointment with you."

    Do not get me started about so called financial planners and the companies that hire them. Trust me ....

  5. #25

    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Posts
    12,383

    >> Not typical to see this type of practice with well regarded insutitutions like Manulife.

    Hardly well regarded in certain circles .. and also at the same time, pick any competitor of theirs and they're operating on the same lowest common denominator.


  6. #26

    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    KTK rules!!!
    Posts
    776
    Quote Originally Posted by marcuslai:
    to be fair, insurance / financial planning products help quite a few. if u don't need what they are selling, its quite alright. but they are not selling magic beans.
    it's not the selling which bugs me, but their RECRUITING PLOY. Business Development Manager IS very misleading for someone not even having base pay!!!

  7. #27

    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Cramped island
    Posts
    5,585

    hahaha...
    one thing i can never take them seriously, cos most of them don't even know what they are talking about.
    all they know is to push their own products. and if u throw them a legitimate question on the underlying fundamental, they have totally no idea.

    the trick i have realized is to force them to compute a few sums for u that are beyond them, and u'd realize they will avoid u..

    e.g. can you actually compute for me the difference between i buying an insurance 1 year earlier as compared to one year later, taking into account the expected gain over the 1st year and the change in premium, etc.etc.

    or to do a straight comparison between term life coverage of the same amount + a straight bond investment of the rest of money... would it make sense.


  8. #28

    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    14,414

    Oh yes its fun taxing them like that, I used to work in the industry myself many moons ago back in U.K around the same time as the disclosure rules came out.

    I can't speak for the others but when I spoke to AIG they weren't concerned about the fact that I wasn't qualified to sell investment products etc.


  9. #29

    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Cramped island
    Posts
    5,585

    qualification is so easy. they only need to know how to throw in some numbers and compute the rule of thumb amounts using inflation assumption.

    one thing i hate most. is when they consider that inflation is 5% per year, and blar blar blar implying u need 2 times your basic pay to survive in 30 years. but they failed to recognize that the value of your property would have grown at 5% per annum as well. you can easily get a reverse mortgage in 30 years time and cashify the property value increase.

    inflation shld be more or less the same across all assets. cannot be just inflate on cost of living and not on the apartment values. if that's the case then nobody in the construction industry is going to build houses in 5 years time


  10. #30

    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    301

    The beauty is you can caclulate any desired result with your use of creative assumptions