What's Wrong With This Bank?

My Paper dated 10 Mar 09 published this article titled "Investors wary of big elephant HSBC". Investors are worried about its US$62 billion in outstanding loans at its HSBC Finance arm in the US and rising provisions in its business in Britain.

I am also wary of this bank. You see, early last year, I bought 2 insurance policies from its insurance arm, HSBC Insurance as well as 2 investment products from the bank. The bank committed several blunders which I find hard to forgive of such an established bank.

1. Wrong Policy Document Delivered

When I received one of the policy documents in the post, I was surprised to find an extra policy document inside the envelope. It was a policy document of another person! Luckily, mine was on top with my name/address showing through the transparent envelope window. Hence my policy document was correctly delivered to me. I looked at the address of the other policyholder. Since it was very near to where I am staying, I did both the bank and the other policyholder a favour and delivered the document to the policyholder personally. I wonder if another person would bother to do the same to me if he/she was the one who had received my policy document wrongly?

2. Wrong Notifications Sent

Recently I received 2 letters from the bank. It informed me that "no coupon will be paid" for two products. Alright, that was hardly surprising in the current poor economic climate. However, I was puzzled because those were products which I never knew I invested in! Indeed, a few days later, a bank staff called to say that the notifications were wrongly sent to me. He said that the bank would be sending out another letter to tell me so. To date, I have not received the letter.


3. No Record Of My Insurance Premium Payment

On receiving the "Premium Due Notice" for one of the insurance policies, I paid the full annual premium promptly at the bank's Marine Parade Branch. The payment was made in 2 parts - one portion was in cash and the other portion was a transfer from my savings account. Yet one month later, I received a "Grace Period Expiration Notice" from the bank, as shown in the photo below. Also shown in the photo are the 2 over-the-counter receipts for my payments made to the bank on 31 Jan 2009. When I called the bank's consultant to clarify the matter, he requested me to fax the receipts to him. It was indeed fortunate that I had kept the receipts as proof. Just imagine what would have happened if I had not kept them? All other insurance companies I have dealt with so far always send me an official receipt soon after I have made payment, without I having to ask them for it. Besides, what's so difficult about issuing an official receipt? I strongly recommend that HSBC Insurance adopt the same practice so that its policyholders will have peace of mind, especially in these uncertain times.



4. Deduction Of Premium From Savings Account With No Prior Notification

For the other policy, payment of premium was by annual Giro deduction. However, the premium was deducted from my savings account without any prior notification. I would not have known of the deduction if I have not signed up for "sms notification" of my savings account transactions:


And you know what? I just found out that if I did not have enough funds in my account for the Giro deduction, the bank would impose a penalty for the failed Giro deduction. I think this is plain ridiculous. Other insurance companies like NTUC Income will always send me a "Giro deduction due" notification before a Giro deduction. Why can't HSBC do the same? Hello, even if I have enough money in my savings account, my funds could be for other more urgent purposes, okay? Is it too much for the policyholder to insist on a "Giro deduction due" reminder from HSBC Insurance, especially when the Giro deduction happens only a once-a-year and the policyholder might have forgotten that the payment is due?

5. No Official Receipts Issued For Premium Payments

I did not receive any official receipts for all my premium payments. When I complained to the consultant, the bank sent me only a partial receipt for the first policy. I just went to the bank again last Saturday to give them "constructive feedback" about their poor service level.

Now, if you experience what I had experienced with the HSBC Insurance, wouldn't you be wary of the bank too? Come on HSBC, haven't you heard of GEMS? No, not Go The Extra Mile for Service but Got Enough Minimum Standard? You really ought to pull up your socks with regards to your service level. I am but one really dissatisfied customer. I wonder how many more are there out there?

Update on 17 Mar 2009:

This evening, I found a letter from HSBC in my letterbox. At first, I thought that the bank was so efficient in resolving my problems. But no! It was a "Lapse Notice". Damn it!


I am willing to give up the policy, HSBC. But please refund my 2 years' worth of premiums paid, not a cent less!

Update on 19 Mar 2009:

I finally received the 2 receipts for one policy in the post. There was still no receipt for the Giro deduction for the other policy. There was no apology or even a covering letter to explain what went wrong. Come on HSBC, is it so hard to say sorry when you have made mistakes? And so many serious ones some more.

A Crooked Product Or A Crooked System?

Recently, many people who bought structured products burnt their fingers when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global financial markets trended downwards. Investors of Lehman Brothers Minibonds, DBS High Notes, Morgan Stanley Pinnacle Notes and Merrill Lynch Jubilee Notes were among those affected.

There was an article about the debacle in the Sunday Times of 7 Dec 2008 titled "Structured Products, Anyone?". It appears that many people have lost confidence in such products, if not in the banks that marketed them. I for one have lost all trust and confidence in my banks and relationship managers (RM) to invest my money for me. DBS recently retrenched 450 employees in Singapore but it claimed that the retrenchment had nothing to do with the High Notes debacle. I personally don't believe that claim. A relationship between and a bank and its customers is based very much on trust. If you lose that, you have lost everything, not just people's money. And it is going to take a long, long time to build up that trust again.

It turned out that banks in Singapore started marketing such high-risk products to retail investors (aka ordinary folks like me) from as early as 1999. How they managed to do so for so long is a wonder. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

Many other questions remained unanswered:

1. How many similar products were sold?

2. What is the total sum of money involved?

3. How many people have bought such products?

4. How many of these products are still in-force, i.e. have yet to reach maturity date?

5. What are the current values of these products?

I am a risk-averse investor myself. When you are barely 2 years away from collecting your CPF money, you should not be taking high risks. Moreover, I have been burnt badly before in 2001 when the technology bubble burst so I know how it feels like to lose your hard-earned money.

In June this year, I visited a well-known foreign bank in Singapore together with a good friend. I was there to look at their investment products. I told the RM that I was a risk-averse investor because of my previous bad experience investing in technology unit trusts. She showed me pamphlets of 3 products - the first was an agricultural commodity fund, the second was a structured product called JPMorgan AsiaConfidence Notes while the third was something called a "retail note" which I believe is also a structured product.

The expected return for the first product was not stated in the brochure. At that time, prices of commodities like wheat and rice were already quite high. So was the price of crude oil, at above US$120 a barrel. I thought the high prices were unsustainable, so I decided against this product. As for the second product, it paid an attractive coupon of 7.5% p.a. The principal was safe unless any of the 4 indices fell below 50% of the initial levels of the indices. (I do not know if any of them has already reached this so-called "unlikely" scenario by now.) I thought that the second product was too complicated and also likely to be of higher risk because of the high coupon payout. In the end, I invested a 5-figure sum in the third product which paid what I considered as a very modest 3.3% p.a. fixed coupon payout on a 5-year investment. The RM also reassured me that the third product was very safe. After all, she asked, "What is the probability of a country going bankrupt? Practically zero, right?"


Well, after what had happened in the global financial markets in recent months, I am not so sure if I could agree with her now. In any case, I now know that with structured products, you could lose your entire investment even if the reference entities did not fail. This was the case with the Lehman Brothers Minibonds and other such products. It looks like I have also been misled into investing in a vulnerable product. The irony is that in the eyes of the financial regulator, I am not considered as a vulnerable investor. I understand that the unofficial (or should it be official?) definition of a "vulnerable investor" is "someone who is above 62-year-old and has no more than primary education", arbitrary though the definition may seem.

After I had indicated my interest in the product, the RM quickly filled in a survey form for me, saying that it was an MAS requirement. I remember that I specifically told her that I was not willing to take any risk at all. It took less than half an hour to close the deal. Such easy money (for the RM and the bank)! I did not receive a copy of the prospectus nor the survey form that I signed. It didn't occur to me to ask for them. Now I know that I should have. All I received was a brochure with a lot of fine print:


A few weeks later I received my bank statement and was very surprised to see the product that I bought being classified under "non-capital protected investments". I quickly looked for the brochure and scanned the small print. And I found this statement:


DAMMIT!

I got to be crazy to risk my entire principle for just a miserly 3.3% p.a. yearly return. You bet I will never trust a bank or an RM ever again. The next 4-1/2 years is going to be a very long and nervous wait for me. Meanwhile, nobody could say how likely my note-issuer might collapse like the Lehman Brothers or how much money I would get back in the end, if at all. To make matters worse, there are people who would say that I am greedy or I "went in with my eyes open". For some people, the situation is so bad that they are even contemplating suicide. Don't worry, I am not thinking of that yet.

Effects Of The Current Financial Turmoil (2)

MAS is in the news again
Not the escapee from prison
Shouldn't it be keeping our savings selamat?*
People who lost money are understandably mad

Some investors bought "minibond"
Now their money could be all gone
Its complexity's beyond the layman
Many didn't know it was linked to Lehman

The product with a fanciful name
But minibonds and bonds are not the same
Who would think a 5% dividend is reasonable
When you could lose all of your principal?

For some it was their entire life savings
Yet the distributors said it had good ratings
"Your risk is very small"
Spinning a tale that's very tall

Is it the buyers' carelessness?
Or rather the sellers' callousness?
Were the buyers simply greedy?
Or were the sellers obviously shifty?

Many elderly people were targeted
The products were indiscreetly marketed
Some were not educated highly
A prospectus they'll not understand easily

Many of them were retirees
Who have collected CPF monies
The banks knew they were cash-laden
So what if there's no diversification?

Some had only wanted fixed deposits renewed
But instead had their investment strategies reviewed
The banks not caring all this while
If the products fit the customers' risk profile

Some VIP even said something like this
If you're unwilling to take any risk
Leave your money with the CPF for 4% return
A very good rate with no risk taken

* - "Selamat" is Malay for "safe". It is also part of the name of the escaped terrorist.

Below are some funny cartoons published in last Sunday's New Paper:

Effects Of The Current Financial Turmoil (1)

I read with sadness that quite a number of people have lost large sums of money recently because they invested in structured deposits linked to the collapsed Lehman Brothers bank. For some of these people, the money they lost were their entire retirement savings. I heard one elderly Singaporean couple invested $250,000 and may not get any of their money back.

As for me, I have made quite a few bad investments myself. A few weeks before the dot-com bubble burst in Mar 2000, I bought into ABN AMRO Star Global Information Society Fund. Needless to say, when I sold off the investment after the bubble burst, I got back only less than 20% of its original value. It was only after the dust had settled that I realised that the fund was classified as "high-risk and narrowly-focussed". To make matters worse, the investment was sold to me by a very close relative. I won't deny that our relationship had suffered because of this unpleasant experience.

More recently (in Aug 2008), my wife and I bought some OCBC non-convertible preference shares. We were attracted to them because they paid 5.1% annual dividends - not bad when you consider that interest rates for savings and fixed deposits are only a small fraction of that. As promised, the shares did pay a 5.1% pa dividend, i.e. S$33.53 for every S$10,000 invested for the 24 days which the shareholder had held on to the shares. Not too bad except that the closing price of the share had dropped from $100 to $93.42 within the same period - we had a paper loss of more than $1000 within less than a month and got back only less than $100. Would you have subscribed to the shares if you know that this is the outcome? Of course, with the benefit of hindsight now, the answer is an obvious one.

My many bad experiences in investment make me wonder how people like Mr Oei Hong Leong can make S$7 million by trading AIG shares in such a difficult market condition. No wonder they say that the rich gets richer (people like Mr Oei) while the poor gets poorer (people like me). Alright, Mr Oei did a good and noble thing by donating his S$7 million gain to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. (I would like to donate too but now, I am badly in need of donations myself.)

I feel that our MAS has not been very pro-active in its role as a financial regulator. It should not have allowed highly risky products to have been marketed as relatively safe investments to risk-averse investors. This would have constituted as misrepresentation by the sellers. The least it could do is to label the products as "high risk" and this fact should be made known to buyer by the seller. The buyer should also be told in layman's terms the various scenarios which will cause a loss to the investment and by how much.