Pushy Agents & Confusing Websites: What I Hate About Buying Insurance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Fh6HlBAxo
My mother bought me dependant insurance for me ever since I was a kid. Now that I am 30+ years old & started my own family, I wanted to get independent insurance for my new growing family.
In this article, I will be sharing 3 mini-stories about my frustrations getting quotations & buying insurance. Despite my Malaysian-based stories, I’m confident that my experiences will be very relatable to people worldwide.
So let’s get started:
The Insurance Agent that Treated Me Like I Was a Kid
Fresh out of college, in 2011 (I was around 22 years old), I secured my first job. The next logical adulting thing to do is to buy insurance.
So I Googled ‘Life Insurance’ & clicked on one of the internationally known insurance companies. One of the agents called me up & we set up a physical appointment at Papparich (at the time, it was not bankrupt yet).
When the appointment came, I told my mother that I was meeting this insurance agent at Papparich. She quickly expressed interest & wanted to join. I said OK & off we went.
Once we arrived, the insurance agent sat across the table from me, and my mother was sitting to the right on the square table.
The insurance agent was a nice guy & my mother was asking a lot of questions (I guess that’s what mothers do). Because of this, the insurance agent probably thought that my mother was paying for the insurance & I just tagged along. But in reality, it was the other way around.
The social dynamic was weird. As the agent went through his policy recommendations, he split the attention between me & my mother. So he explained it to my mother first, then explained it again to me like I was a child.
Not going to lie, I was offended & felt embarrassed to be treated like that in public.
I think his intention was good, but I told him later that won’t buy from him as I was not happy with how I was treated. He understood & apologized.
He never contacted me ever again.
The Confusing Insurance Website Riddled with Lingo
As I grew older & eventually picked the right girl to marry, I wanted to buy insurance for my new expanding family.
I was looking into buying medical, life & critical illness insurance for my whole family. But I had 2 problems:
- Insurance agents piss me off. If possible, I want to buy everything online
- Since I have 2 jobs, I don’t have time to go through complicated lingos on insurance websites.
So I was shopping around for online insurance, DIY insurance if you will.
But because my mother bought dependent insurance for me (since I was a kid), I wanted to know what was already covered. So I don’t waste money overinsuring myself.
So I logged into the website of that insurance & checked what I was covered. My first impression, the website is hard to navigate & I had no idea what any of the terminologies meant.
Coming from an Engineering & corporate background, there’s nothing that infuriates me more than complicated, bland corporate lingo.
I had to call the insurance company (again avoiding our agent), to ask them what is & not covered in my insurance policy.
The lady on the phone answered all of my questions pretty quickly, which begs me to wonder, why don’t they make the website easy to understand so I don’t have to waste time calling in?
All insurance companies, please take note of Etiqa & FWD Takaful’s website. A simple, clean website with illustrations & more importantly, NO INSURANCE LINGO. Skimming through, I’m 75% confident I understand the product.
The Pushy Insurance Agent
As part of our employee perks at my current Digital Marketing job, we have free Hospitalization insurance from AIA.
Since I already have some coverage under AIA, It would make sense to add the other coverages under the same company.
Luckily, the AIA website is also easy to browse through & understand. However, there are their still limitations:
- They have multiple overlapping products, making it hard for me to choose by myself online.
- I can’t buy most AIA insurance products online. They still require me to contact their agent, making getting a rough quotation a hassle.
So I filled up the ‘contact us’ form & scheduled a video call with one of their agents.
The lady was nice, but a very cookie-cutter insurance agent. I think you know what I’m talking about? Talks & dresses like a typical insurance agent. Nothing wrong with it, but I can predict what will come out of her mouth. She was that predictable.
So coming into this with a good intention to get coverage, I told her my requirements:
- I don’t want any investment-linked insurance as it makes my monthly premium expensive despite a low coverage.
- I want medical & critical illness coverage for my expanding family (I’m expecting a child soon).
- The coverage is for me & my new child only as my wife has her own insurance.
The funny thing is, the moment she heard the keyword “pregnant,” she immediately started promoting non-related pregnancy insurance:
“Oh, congratulations! Actually, we have this pregnancy insurance that can cover the fetus during pregnancy. It will bla bla bla.”
I rudely interrupted her and said, “can you stay on track here? I want medical, critical illness insurance for me & my child (assume he/she is already born), what is my coverage & my monthly payment?”
A pretty simple question (so I thought). She then emailed me several policies as a quotation.
Remember that I told her specifically I don’t want investment-linked insurance? But guess what? All of her quotations are for investment-linked insurance.
LOL
Screw this. I give up with insurance agents. No way Jose.
Insurances You Can Purchase Online — Bypassing Agents
So for my next insurance purchase, I want an insurance company with a clean & easy to understand website & the ability to purchase them online.
After many hours of frustrating online research, I narrowed it down to 2 companies that you can start your online insurance research:
If someone is looking into online insurance, I recommend you to check out FWD Takaful. Click on the links & check out their online quotation, most are very affordable:
Since I have a growing family, my insurance requirements are a little more complicated & I have no choice but to meet an agent with FWD Takaful.
One of their agents called me & he sounds knowledgeable. I’ll be meeting him at a coffee shop soon to discuss my needs. Hopefully, this will be my last meetup with any insurance agent.
I’ll update you guys with what I found out next time.
Originally published at https://balkonihijau.com on March 14, 2022.
