I REFER to last Thursday's article, 'Retirees recount their big losses'.

Full Story

Where is the leadership from MAS as they seem to be following Hong Kong? The burned investors have seen the true colours and quality of these extremely well-paid people. Hee and Haw and insensitive remarks - oh it is between the banks and investors - go after the bank who sold you Lederman products, `life is like that. want good rewards - take the risk. put in CPF', etc then when the protests gathered steam and saw HK leaders acted very decisively - then go into damage control mode and copy.
When Rome burns, another bloke was telling us how rich he is when he saw his CPF balance. His shrugging of shoulders and shaking of head to display his obvious pleasure when he uttered those `rich' words have a most dissonant effect on the men in the street.

There are no good and honest WMs and RMs in this business. If there is, they will be out of business. Like racehorse trainers, they will tell you how good your horses are but when you are burnt, they will tell you all the craps.

Yeah, agree totally with #2. Ministers have no clue and guts to do anything except copy. In this case, they copy HK's track completely. That;s the modus operatus of the ministers here. One person setup ERP, the new minister take over and just copy the same policy. LKY says China will be the global economy driving force of the future 3 years back in a business forum. Look, now GCT is copying that same message as if it is his own !

Totally agree..i was a former RM myself....we are just treated like a cash cow generating revenue for the bank. And i totally agree with the point that it is always taboo to talk about downside risk to your bosses. They will just screw you up

Monday, October 20, 2008
Be careful of your relationship manager
Here are a few frightening stories ....

1. A customer deposited $800,000 into a fixed deposit. He was not aware that the relationship manager placed it in a leverage account which caused a loss of $400,000. The customer was asked to top up the account. The customer is making a Police report. Details are also given to a journalist.

2. Two weeks ago, someone sent an e-mail to me. Her mother lost the entire sum of $500,000 in a dual currency investment. She does not know how it happened. I asked her to get the bank to send a statement to her. I have not heard from her yet. My guess is that the money went into a leveraged account. It is probably leveraged 3 times or more. A 30% drop in the currency, with this type of leverage, could wipe out the entire deposit.

3. A neighbour's relative saw me last night. He was advised by the relationship manager to invest SGD $250,000 in Lehman Brother bonds in April 2008 to earn 4.2%. The bonds are now worthless. Previously, the same RM advised him to invest in a bond, which turned out to be a hedge fund. He has liquidated the investment at a big loss.

I wish to send this message to warn bank customers about the relationship managers. It seems that they have to meet high sales quota and are recommeding risky financial products to their customers, without giving proper advice. As there are so many cases of dishonest acts, we now have to worry about the integrity of the financial institutions and the relationship managers.

If you are a victim, you must lodge a Police report for dishonesty and also a complaint against the relationship manager. We have to act to clean up these dishonesty.

Posted by Tan Kin Lian at 5:35 AM
http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2008/...p-manager.html

Then maybe consumers could be better-educated on what questions to ask and what to look out for.

Sometimes these relationship managers speak in terms that only lawyers and financial analysts can understand, and when you ask them to explain what they mean, there is no clarity still.

Cconsumers can be smarter about where they choose to put their money, and they have the upper hand.

Posted by Tan Kin Lian
Monday, October 13, 2008
Sales representatives should tell the truth and admit mistakes
Dear Mr. Tan

I have spoken to my financial advisor who sold me the Notes. My financial advisor mentioned that it seems like the banks & financial institutions are trying to protect their interests and have pushed all responsibilities of misrepresentation to the sales persons selling the Notes products to investors.

I need to highlight this because if the sales person is the one who misrepresented, the banks and financial instituations can claim they are not in the postition to refund or attend to our complaints.

Apparently, my financial advisor mentioned that last week, his company has gotten all their sales staff to sign some documents that in the event of misrepresentation to investors, the sales persons will have to bear the compensation to investors themselves.

REPLY
The responsibility lies with the financial institution, as they have not provided the correct information and training to the sales representatives.

The sales representatives should tell the truth and not be intimidated into telling lies. If they lie, they are commiting a crime. If they make a mistake and gave the wrong information, they should admit it, as it is a genuine mistake.

It is better for the sales representative to tell the truth.
http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2008/...ell-truth.html

Thanks, Mr Tan Kin Lian, for posting this. If the correspondence did take place, it's a little unfair.

Cos in an event where there is misrepresentation of facts, and the relationship manager has quit the job, who is then accountable?

If no one wants to take responsibility, then aren't consumers unprotected?

It is funny that relationship managers are now acting as if they were also victims. They do have a equal share of the blame and cheating. They cannot try to escape liability stating that the superiors told them to say this say that. Because you are paid for selling it, you are selling the investment product without even knowling what it is or just knowing some outward details. In fact the prime blame should be put on relationship managers and they should be sent to jail.