[LIVE Event] Singapore Financial Conference 2015

Risks in the financial industry has always been there and if we're not careful, we could all be on the road to another crisis. The financial industry has changed a lot over the years especially after the famous 2008 global financial crisis which lead to the fall of Lehman Brothers, one of the world's largest investment banks.

Singapore Financial Conference 2015 is an annual event that is organised by NTU Interactive Investment Club. My blog, SG Young Investment, is proud to be the media partner for this year's financial conference which will be held conveniently at NTUC auditorium, 1 Marina Boulevard. This event is fully sponsored and you can register for a FREE ticket to the event.

All participants will each get a goodie bag and there will also be complimentary dinner served as well.

This year's theme will focus on how past and present events have shaped the risk and regulatory environment in the finance industry as well as the implications of these changes on participants, whether as a potential investor or as an undergraduate looking for a career in the finance industry. If you're an investor or a student planning to join the financial industry in the future, this conference would definitely be an eye opener for you.

With oil prices at a low and interest rates set to increase, I'm sure all of us want to know what are the opportunities and risks out there. Is the financial industry still suffering the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis? All these and more will be discussed during the special panel discussion at the conference.

Panel Discussions and Networking Opportunities

The organizers have invited prominent speakers from the financial industry such as the senior vice president and head of retail investors from SGX, the general manager of SIAS and more.

They will be introducing Pigeonhole Live, a Q&A smartphone app during the event so you can fire away your questions instantly and anonymously to their panel of distinguished experts.

What's more, you get to interact with the professionals during a casual networking session over a complimentary dinner. I will also be there at the event as the organisers have kindly invited me as a distinguished guest.


Here's the full list of speakers and panalist plus the program highlights for the conference:

Guest of Honour 
Ms Lynn Gaspar
Senior Vice President, Head of Retail Investors
Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX)


Presentation by Securities Investors Association (Singapore): “Governance, Risk and Compliance in the Financial Sector" 

1. Mr Dennis Lee
Director, RSM Ethos

2. Mr Daniel Lim
Manager, RSM Ethos


Singapore Financial Conference 2015 Highlight: “Treading on Thin Ice” Panel Discussion 

1. Mr Chang Tou Chen
Managing Director, Head of Global Banking South East Asia, HSBC

2. Mr Sumit Aggarwal
Head, Local Corporates, Commodity Traders & Agribusiness Transaction Banking, Standard Chartered Bank

3. Mr Alfred Low
Director, Cluster Head (Greater China Market), Credit Suisse

4. Mr Tan Tzu Ping
Head of FICC Corporate Origination, Asia Pacific Global Markets Bank of America Merrill Lynch

5. Mr Richard Dyason (Moderator)
General Manager, Securities Investors Association Singapore

Details of the Conference:

Date: 27th March 2015 (Friday)
Time: 1830 – 2200                                                                  
Registration begins at 1630, Complimentary Dinner & Networking commence at 1730
Venue: NTUC Auditorium, 1 Marina Boulevard, Singapore 018989

Sign up and get your FREE tickets to the Conference

You can sign up for the conference at this link: tinyurl.com/SFC15

For more information on the conference, visit SFC's Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/sfcinvest

This conference is just a week away and seats are limited. Hundreds of people are expected to turn up for the event. Get your FREE tickets now (Dinner and Goodie Bag inclusive).

See you there!

Planning for your children's Education

Image: Courtesy Google Images

Planning and proper implementation of the plan contributes to the success of any project. Anticipating uncertainties and shortcomings and having a ‘Plan B’ is also part of any project planning.

This is equally applicable to any individual’s life as well. Be it acquiring a house property, buying valuable assets or above all, creating provisions for children's education assume greater importance in all countries, where the primary, secondary and higher education is not sponsored by the State or is not subsidized by any Trust.

In such situations, it is the PRIMARY responsibility of the parents to create a corpus for the children right from their childhood, so that they need not look for funds from other sources. Even though the investments appear small at the beginning, they will grow along with time, if they are not withdrawn for other purposes or emergencies.

Any investment, if combined with insurance will certainly yield desired results at the appropriate time, and this is all possible if both the parents discuss this issue and take a decision. It is better to take advise from a Professional before evaluating the options.

An ideal planning would look something like this:

Product	To be taken at Age	For parents	For children
Health Insurance	Immediately – if not taken already	A minimum of Rs.3 lakhs – Family Floater	From birth
Life Insurance – Pure Term Plan	Not applicable	20 Times the Annual Income as per IT Returns	Not required
Health Insurance Top up	Immediately – if not taken already	Rs.5 lakh top up with 3 lakhs as deductible	Along with family
Unit Linked Life Insurance	Immediately – Select fund as per your risk appetite	Separate policies for separate goals	Immediately – as per educational needs
Systematic Investment Plan (SIP)	Immediately or at earliest possible time	Goal Based – for relatively higher returns	Goal Based – as per future needs
Deferred Annuity (Pension Plan – Unit Linked)	Earliest possible time	To coincide with retirement age	Not required

Contact your Qualified/Certified Financial Planner for further details.

OIC helps develop training for examining, analyzing insurers’ climate change risk

As the state’s insurance regulator, one of the things the Office of the Insurance Commissioner does is examine and analyze insurers’ finances to make sure they have enough money in cash and investments to pay consumers’ insurance claims. Climate change is increasingly a risk to insurers’ business, both from a claims standpoint and from an investment standpoint.

Some of OIC’s friendly financial examiners participate in a dry run of a new training for state regulators to evaluate insurers’ climate change risk.

Commissioner Kreidler has led the climate change work group for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) since 2006. As part of that work, the OIC led a work group that developed the guidance for other state regulators to use when evaluating insurers’ climate change risks and investments during financial examinations and analyses. Last week, the OIC’s financial examiners and analysts were given a dry run of the training to offer feedback before it is presented to other state regulators. In essence, insurers are expected to identify climate change-related risk to their business and evaluate how these factors may affect their claims and how they invest their money.

Washington is not new to working with insurers on climate change. Since 2010, our state has been one of a handful that requires insurance companies to answer an annual survey about how they are addressing their risk related to climate change.

You can read more about Commissioner Kreidler’s work with climate change and read the most recent report about how insurers are addressing climate change.

The Thought Process Behind Spending Money

Its so hard to save money but easy to spend money. Do you agree?

Most of us would agree to the above statement. We have always been told that we need discipline to save money. The word discipline sounds harsh. It reminds me of the discipline master in school who punish students that misbehave. It reminds me of the regimentation in army which controls our freedom. Is it really that hard to save money?

Since saving money has been a boring and a sad topic to talk about, let's try a different way and talk about spending money instead. What exactly are our minds thinking when we spend money? Perhaps this will shed some light on how saving money can be easier for all of us.

A World Without Money

Imagine a world without money. Will we still be happy if we have no money to spend? In the olden days where Fiat money was not yet introduced, people practice barter trading with each other where they exchanged goods and services without the use of money. In those days, if you want to eat chicken, maybe you can exchange it with the duck you have and if you get tired of having chickens, you can exchange for some other stuffs. As long as both parties agree, the trade can be carried out.

Barter trading may not be equivalent to spending money as you need to exchange your goods for someone's else goods. It really depends on whether you think your goods are worth to be exchanged with another person's goods? Exchanging a cow with a chicken doesn't seem like a fair trade in this case. If we put it to today's context, will we exchange an iPhone with a cow? Which is more valuable in this case?

Image Credit: commons.wikimedia.org

In today's world, we don't have to exchange goods for goods any more. Money was created as a medium of exchange to buy goods and services. The more money we have, the more things we can buy. It is not like in the olden days where the stuffs you own will always be limited since you will always have to exchange something for another. This resulted in most of us buying more stuffs than we actually need.

In economics class, I learnt that the Earth has limited resources but humans have unlimited wants. This is the concept of scarcity. As such, when more people want a particular item, the prices are raised up so less people can buy it. Our high housing prices are a result of scarcity. More people want to buy houses but there is not enough of it. It drives prices up.


The Thought Process Behind Spending Money

Money has no value?

Most people spend money and few are savers. The main reason is a lot of us see money as only some paper or plastic we have in our wallets. Worse still when money is in the bank, we only see it as numbers. When we start spending, money seems to have a value now base on the things we spend it on. We receive something we can see in exchange of papers, plastics and numbers. We receive services which makes us feel good. We thought that we got rid of an unreal creature called money which has no value for us.

Does money really have no value? To say the truth, all of us are right when we think that money has no value. It is really just a medium of exchange and is only legalised for use just because our government says so. During war times, money has no value and really becomes just paper then. But should we spend all our money just because it has no value?

Wiring our brain to spend money in a different way

If you realised, till now I'm still talking about spending money and nothing about saving money. The way to wire our brain to spend money differently is to buy the correct things with our money. When we buy the wrong stuffs such as spending too much on luxuries, the money is gone forever. But if we buy assets such as stocks, properties that can put money into our pockets, then the money grows continuously.

That being said, we can still buy luxuries. But I will use the money generated from the assets I bought to pay for these luxuries. In this case, my money continues to grow while I enjoy the luxuries instead of running into financial problems if I just spend on luxuries without buying assets. I get to enjoy and at the same time I have more money. The rich get richer this way.

Less for More

Philip Ng, the CEO of Far East Organisation in Singapore once said:

“The ironic thing about possession is that you don’t possess the possessions, the possessions possess you.” 

When we chase after material possessions, we end up being possessed by the possessions. This is so true as we often see people who own a lot of possessions are still not satisfied with what they have while those who live simple lives are contented and happy. If we can change our mindset to be grateful for the little things in life, it would be so much better. We may just end up happier each day.

If you find it hard to control your spending and have nothing left at the end of every month, try to take note of your thought process and it could all change for the better.

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Related Posts:
1. The chase after money lifestyle and materialism
2. The pursuit of money or happyness?
3. Practising Frugality to Achieve Happiness in a High Cost of Living Environment

Gift Of A Lifetime

SITUATION

SOLUTION

 THE POLICY

HOW IT WORKS

WHAT DID WE ACCOMPLISH

Michael Pfeil

Family First Life of Maryland
www.familyfirstlifemd.com
mpfeil@familyfirstlifemd.com


Looking For A New Career? Visit Our Jobs Website www.FamilyFirstLifeJobs.com

Indexed Universal Life Insurance

Indexed Universal Life

"Buy Term and Invest The Rest" 

 A common phrase in the insurance industry you will hear is, "Buy Term and Invest The Rest". This does not Always work for everyone and is the reason why today only 5% of people at age 65 can retire. Also, the majority of the people that I personally meet with are 60+ years of age and have 30 year mortgages with $0 in Savings and $0 in Life Insurance.

Market Risks

When you invest your money in the market whether it be in stocks, mutual funds, etc. your money is at Sequence of Returns Risk, potentially causing unexpected losses. Although this is not an issue for younger folks, it can be an issue for people near or at retirement age. Another issue to consider is Tax risks. No one knows where taxes will be in the future, so this can drastically reduce money in retirement when taxes increase significantly.

Index Universal Life Option

My personal recommendation is a large term policy to cover a person while their debt is at its highest and term insurance is at its lowest cost and also purchase an IUL (Indexed Universal Life) policy with an increasing death benefit that would be fully funded by age 65. At that point, I would change the strategy to a level death benefit from 65 to 121 to bring down the cost of insurance. At 65, you then turn on 0 net cost policy loans from 65 to 100 and have the policy pay you Tax-Free Income for the rest of your life. This will also provide a death benefit for your loved ones during this time, in addition to providing you with Tax-Free Income.

I am in no way saying this is the end all be all solution for your retirement and insurance needs. There are many carriers with many different products and everything has a solution for a specific problem. In addition to the IUL, I would also invest in the market and in your 401K and or IRA, as well. For anyone to ever give a strategy without a conversation to fully understand your specific situation is highly suspect.

Also, all money not in life insurance is taxable and that should also be considered. Additional income from other sources, other than Life Insurance, could affect your AGI (adjusted gross income) and cause higher taxation on social security benefits and also may be able to be taken by bankruptcy courts and/or creditors, should a situation like that arise. Money in high cash value life insurance may be protected from bankruptcy courts and/or creditors and does not affect your AGI (adjusted gross income) when it comes to social security. A Life Insurance Death Benefit is also passed tax-free, probate free to your loved ones.


For more information, contact us at Family First Life to meet with a professional to discuss the best option for you and your family!

A Rich Life With Less Stuff - The Minimalists

Does having more material possessions make us happier and richer in life?

In today's world, we have so many things to choose from and it feels awesome. But, sometimes we just give up choosing and use the same few stuffs. In recent years, the number of fast food chains have increased 2-3 times and the number of clothing stores have increased by many times too. We even have hundreds of TV programmes to choose from and hundreds of food items at the supermarket.

We buy things and fill our ever growing smaller homes day by day and year by year. Most of these stuffs end up abandoned somewhere in the corner such as electronic items, clothing, accessories etc. It clutters up our life and in the end we still use the same few items that we like. A few days ago, I chanced upon this interesting TED talk on how to have a Rich Life with Less Stuff. The speakers are known as the Minimalists and this concept has been adopted by people all around the world where they experienced happier lives. Watch the video below to know how you can have a rich life with less stuff:

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Related Videos:
1. The chase after money lifestyle and materialism
2. What if money was no object?