Solutions

Solving Contact/Calendar sync issue in Windows 10 Mobile

Posted on by Eric Tay

If you’ve recently upgraded your Windows Phone 8.x to Windows 10 Mobile, you may encounter some lag in synching your contact and calendar with your Outlook or Outlook.com. The lag may be a few hours to never. I’ve even read the Microsoft Support forums of people hard resetting the phone to solve this problem.

This problem seems to be especially pervasive if you’re like me and your primary Microsoft Account is NOT a Microsoft domain like Hotmail.com, MSN.com or Outlook.com.

In Windows 8.x, all we needed to do was to go to Settings -> EMail account and long-tap to Sync the account manually. However, in Windows 10 Mobile, this is not possible anymore.

I’ve just discovered the reason and the solution. It’s actually very simple, but it may cost some battery life in the short-term.

As you can see from the screen caps, my primary Microsoft Account has an alias to a now defunct domain. This means that I don’t receive ANY email to this email account anymore.

By default, your email accounts (& by extension, Microsoft Account), is set based on your usage as shown in the 3rd screen cap.

If you regularly send and receive email, Windows 10 Mobile will internally set your Sync frequency to “as item arrive”, so whenever you receive an email, it is automatically pushed to your phone or tablet immediately.

However, if you don’t receive ANY email and only occasionally change items in your Contact or Calendar, Windows 10 Mobile will try to save battery by toggling the Sync frequency to “daily” or less.

All you need to do is to go to Settings -> Accounts -> Your email and accounts -> Tap <your primary Microsoft Account> or any other accounts where you’ve chosen to sync Contacts and/or Calendar -> Manage -> Change mailbox sync settings -> Download new content -> change to “as item arrive” -> Done -> Save.

Windows 10 Mobile will immediately sync your Contacts & Calendars, and will continue to do so immediately when you make any changes in Outlook or Outlook.com.

Note that your battery life may suffer a little so if you have less active accounts, you should set those to “based on my usage”.

All comments and questions are welcome. Be sure to like this article if it’s useful and share it with your friends and family, or colleagues who can benefit from it! Buttons are all over my website just waiting for you to click them! :)

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5
Finance & Insurance, Health

MediShield Life & Integrated Shield plans updated

Posted on by Eric Tay

Sorry, it took a while but my MediShield Life & Integrated plan article has been updated.

I’ve fact checked, improved the grammar, added updated information after MOH has clarified certain questions and the claims example is much clearer.

Check it out!

*** MOH will be announcing more details on the new Public Hospital B1 Ward plans soon! Follow Button my blog to be the first to learn what’s in store for you & your family! ***

0
Finance & Insurance, Solutions

What to do if your S’pore car got into an accident in Malaysia

Posted on by Eric Tay

An unfortunate incident

It’s 11:59pm. You and your family has just celebrated a relative’s birthday and you’re driving back to Singapore from Malacca. Your kids are asleep at the back and you’re reminiscing with your spouse the great time spent with relatives & friends, many of whom you haven’t seen in years. It’s the end of a perfect day.

Bang! The car shuddered and the steering wheel jerked to the right, snapping out of your hands. You jammed on the brakes. The car swerved to the right and prowled into a ditch. Boom! The airbags deployed and a curse word left your mouth.

As your vision cleared, you begin to hear crying and car honks on top of the ringing in your ear. As you look around, you see 12:00am, your spouse looks dazed, your kids are up and crying but otherwise unhurt. You look outside and people & motorcycles are converging around your car and you thought, “What just happened?”

Motor accidents happen more often than you think

Events like this happen every hour of every day in Malaysia. According to statistics from Michigan University, Malaysia has a high road fatality rate of 30 per 100,000 people. There are roughly 6300 fatalities on Malaysia roads yearly. Obviously, the number of motor accidents with non-fatal injuries or no injuries are much higher.

My client recently got into an accident in Malacca. Fortunately, there was no bodily injury nor 3rd-party property damage. His car did its job and protected the occupants. However, it sustained serious damage to front-right suspension with cracked rim, destroyed tyre and tie-rod. There may be further damage to the undercarriage.

* For clarity, the information is accurate as of Feb 2016

Help is a few phone calls away

One of the first thing he did was call me. This is after 12am but I always tell my clients it’s ok to call me at any time if it’s an emergency. He wanted to know if it’s cheaper to repair his car in Malacca, or have it towed back to Singapore to be repaired at an AIG authorised workshop.

Since my mind isn’t exactly in gear yet, it’s almost 1am mind you, I gave him AIG 24/7 roadside assistance hotline so he can talk to the experts first. During this time, I pulled out his policy and went through the benefits.

AIG AutoPlus covers from Singapore to 80km north of the Thai-Malaysian border so towing back to Singapore (due to accident) is covered up to $500. Since he has NCD protector, even if he did an own damage claim, next year premium will not be adversely affected. With 50% NCD, he also has an excess waiver of up to $600.

I called the same AIG Hotline at around 1am to get additional information and to confirm the coverage terms & conditions but the call centre officer cannot provide claims information. They can only arrange roadside assistance, towing services and help manage emergency services if needed. They were also unable to quote towing charges in Malaysia because the service provider doesn’t operate at 1am, which is fair.

So next morning, I called AIG Claims department to confirm all the benefits for my client and also AIG Hotline to get the towing charges, which comes up to RM1450, of which RM200 is a non-claimable levy. The towing provider can provide towing service up to KL, so do take note if you intend to drive further north. The charges will be more!

AIG was very fast in providing these information, which I relayed to my client via WhatsApp.

SMSes gets expensive real fast when each message takes 3 SMSes to send! And these charges cannot be claimed under AIG AutoPlus. You need to buy a Travel insurance like AIG TravelGuard. And yes! You can buy a travel insurance when you self-drive in Malaysia!

Claims experience

For a normal car insured under AIG AutoPlus, the claim is pretty straight forward.

  • Report the accident to Malaysian police. This is important because it sets the facts right so in future, no one in Malaysia can send you a lawyer letter claiming you hit their car or property. Or if property damage occurred, there is document + photographic proof so the property owner cannot over-claim from you
  • Call AIG Hotline to arrange for the towing services from Malaysia
  • If you’re not following the tow truck, you need to prepare photocopies of your Passport, Driver License, Certificate of Insurance & LTA vehicle registration. This is needed for the tow truck driver to verify with Customs authorities the intention to send the car back to a Singapore workshop
  • (AIG didn’t mention this but I think it’s a good idea to photocopy the Malaysian Police report just in case)
  • Pay RM1450 to the tow-truck driver, you can claim back RM1250 from AIG or up to $500 depending on exchange rates
  • Repairs done at AIG Authorised workshop enjoy up to $600 excess waiver, so if your excess is less than $1200, you don’t have to pay anything
  • When you get back to Singapore, you get to enjoy up to 10 days of free Replacement Vehicle
  • Lastly, you need to produce the Malaysian Police report and file an Accident Report as per GIA guideline immediately upon returning to Singapore, or earliest possible if you or your occupant sustained injuries

What happens if you drive a high-cc or sports car and your excess is very high, like $3000? This is when it may make sense to engage a workshop in Malaysia if, 1) it’s a trustworthy workshop & 2) the damage is not too severe. So how do you calculate when it’s worth to repair in Malaysia? (This assumes SGD:MYR exchange rate at 1:3)

  1. If your car got into an accident north of KL, the towing charges increase beyond RM1450. Let’s say it’s Malacca, so only RM200 cannot be claimed
  2. At $3000 excess, the excess waiver only covers $600, so you need to fork out $2400 or RM7200
  3. If the repairs cost less than RM7400, you may consider getting it done in Malaysia if you know the workshop because it means you get to drive the car back
  4. If your NCD is NOT 50% and/or you don’t have NCD Protector, during the next renewal the NCD will drop 30%! Which translate to a huge increase in premium, meaning you may prefer to take the risk in Malaysia since it’ll take 3 years to get back this 30% NCD and you will suffer 3 years of high insurance premium

Getting your car done in Malaysia does carry the risk that the workshop may not spot all the problems and repair everything. If you return to Singapore and the car breaks down, you still have to send your car to an AIG Authorised workshop and you’d STILL incur the excess of $3000, which you have to co-pay $2400.

I don’t see much information on this topic when I searched online so I hope my article will help someone in future in this kind of unfortunate event.

So far, my experience with AIG Motor claims & Emergency Hotline has been very positive. I have no problem encouraging my AIG Motor insurance clients to explore Malaysia at their leisure. It’s a great country to visit, as I’ve done on numerous occasions with no problems at all, not to mention our favourable exchange rates makes everything cheaper! 🙂

Published: 8 March 2016
Update 1: 9 March 2016 – Grammer & new facts

All comments and questions are welcome. Be sure to like this article if it’s useful and share it with your friends and family, or colleagues who can benefit from it! Button are all over my website just waiting for you to click them! 🙂

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0
Finance & Insurance, Reviews

Difference between Employee Benefits & Shield Health Insurance plans

Posted on by Eric Tay

Employment situation in Singapore

In Singapore, it’s always a battle to hire & retain productive employees. Even when the economy is bad, the Singapore workforce has always managed a decent level of income due to our adaptibility and skill levels.

It is this reason that job hopping is very common amongst Singapore employees. The 2 main reasons to job-hop these days are a more attractive pay package & dissatisfaction with their immediate superior.

It’s therefore a battle for HR managers to keep productive employees and their managers, or in fact, the whole team! Once an employee reaches a certain pay-grade, they start to look at other factors in deciding whether they’d job-hop.

The Singapore workforce is a very pragmatic group of people. All of us know that medical bills are just going to get higher. This is due to better treatment becoming available that treats our lifestyle illnesses with less side-effects. We also know that our income increment cannot keep up with medical inflation.

All Singaporeans and PRs have already transferred the risk of major hospital bills to either MediShield Life or other Shield plans but these plans have deductible & co-insurance. If there’s a way to transfer those risks as well, wouldn’t it be perfect?

Employee Benefits

Enter insurers’ Group insurance.

All employees of Multi-Nation Corporations (MNCs) have it and many SMEs are enrolling their staff as well. Employees in companies that provide these Group insurance typically show more loyalty, take less MC and are generally more productive.

Basically, buying an insurance is a way to show love. It’s the same with employers as well. 🙂

The common Employee Benefits include Group Term Life, which covers Death and Total & Permanent Disabilities; Group Critical Illnesses; Group Personal Accident; and most interestingly Group Hospital & Surgery (GHS).

For the purpose of this article, I’d only touch on the difference between GHS & a typical Shield plan.

GHS Benefits

Group Hospital & Surgery is actually a collection of insurance policies instead of a big policy that covers everything. The main reason to do this is of course, company budget. Taking up all the benefits of a GHS plan is obviously not cheap in light of the medical costs in Singapore.

I wouldn’t be going into so-called International Health plans that companies buy for upper management or expatriates as these are 2-3 times more expensive that a comprehensive GHS plan.

In summary, GHS is made up of:

  • Hospital & Surgical benefits, which covers Inpatient treatments including day-surgeries
  • Specialist Outpatient benefits, which covers Specialist Treatment that don’t require admission to a medical facility
  • Medical card, which covers normal GP clinics participating in the insurer’s plan or we call ‘panel clinics’
  • Extended Major Medical benefits, which covers hospitalisation that is more than 20 days. This benefit usually comes with a 20% co-insurance.

Companies may mix and match these benefits according to their trade and the perceived needs of the employees, and of course, their annual budget as well.

GHS Limitations and how they compare with Shield plans

Now it’s important to note that GHS doesn’t cover everything. In my line of work, I have heard lots of clients and prospects say their company will cover all their hospitalisation bills. This is simply not true for the majority of employees.

A lot of times, what the employer meant is, they can issue a letter of guarantee to the hospital, which is not the same as the entire bill is covered. A letter of guarantee basically means that the company will bear the upfront costs of the hospitalisation. After that, the company will claim from GHS. If the limits are exceeded, they will recover it via staff medical benefits, followed by deducting from the employee’s salary. Obviously, different companies have different procedures so check with your HR manager.

In Singapore, GHS is now seen as a supplementary medical insurance to the Shield plans because Shield plans covers the really big bills while GHS covers from the first $1 to a small sized hospital bill. A typical GHS plan should be able to cover the the Shield plans’ deductible and co-insurance BUT even a high-end GHS plan will NOT be able to cover an extended stay at a Private Hospital in Singapore.

Take a look at the chart below, prepared by my friends at AIA Corporate Solutions. The information is accurate as of 15 September 2015 so it may have gone up. Look at the room charges for Private Hospitals! Also, GST is NOT included!

Ward Type 1-bedded 2-bedded 4-bedded 5-bedded 6-bedded Open
A1 A2 B1 B2+ B2 C
ALEXANDRA HOSPITAL
Citizen NA NA NA NA 63.55 29.91
Permanent Resident NA NA NA NA 123.36 81.31
Foreigner NA NA NA NA 231.96 207.01
CHANGI GENERAL HOSPITAL
Citizen 401.87 NA 224.30 NA 71.03 36.45
Permanent Resident 401.87 NA 251.40 NA 128.97 81.31
Foreigner From 401.87 NA From 287.85 NA From 252.34 From 207.48
KHOO TECK PUAT HOSPITAL
Citizen 392.52 NA 185.05 71.96 NA 32.71
Permanent Resident 392.52 NA 222.43 127.10 NA 70.09
Foreigner 392.52 NA 231.78 230.84 NA 175.70
KK WOMEN’S & CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Citizen 420.00 NA 235.00 160.00 75.00 35.00
Permanent Resident 420.00 NA 306.00 242.00 154.00 104.00
Foreigner 462.00 NA 409.20 400.40 383.90 332.20
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
Citizen 440.00 264.00 210.00 NA 70.09 38.32
Permanent Resident 440.00 264.00 236.00 NA 128.04 85.05
Foreigner 440.00 316.80 286.00 NA NA NA
NG TENG FONG GENERAL HOSPITAL
Citizen 402.80 NA 210.28 NA 68.22 33.64
Permanent Resident 402.80 NA 237.38 NA 117.76 75.70
Foreigner 402.80 NA 263.55 NA 209.35 180.37
TAN TOCK SENG HOSPITAL
Citizen 392.52 262.62 210.28 NA 70.10 to 78.50 39.25
Permanent Resident 392.52 262.62 235.51 NA 121.50 to 131.78 86.92
Foreigner 392.52 262.62 248.60 NA 219.62 to 225.23 203.74
SINGAPORE GENERAL HOSPITAL
Citizen 400.00 NA 225.00 NA 70.09 32.71
Permanent Resident 400.00 NA 254.00 NA $135.51 to $174.81 $88.79 to $140.37
Foreigner 440.00 NA 300.00 NA 257.00 230.00
GLENEAGLES HOSPITAL
569.16 307.48 242.06 NA NA NA
MOUNT ALVERNIA HOSPITAL
532.00 288.00 209.00 NA 148.00 NA
MOUNT ELIZABETH HOSPITAL
598.13 317.76 265.38 NA NA NA
MOUNT ELIZABETH NOVENA HOSPITAL
598.13 NA NA NA NA NA
PARKWAY EAST HOSPITAL
530.84 285.05 224.30 NA NA NA
RAFFLES HOSPITAL
588.00 300.00 231.00 NA 168.00 NA
THOMSON MEDICAL CENTRE
530.00 288.00 209.00 NA NA NA

Many of the GHS plans that companies have bought over the years can no longer keep up! So, many Singaporeans & PRs simply rely on their Shield plans. However, many Foreign professionals will have to fork out money from their own pocket, which will come as a rude shock!

Take a look at the difference between a typical GHS & our AIA HealthShield Gold Max A.

Benefits Typical GHS HealthShield Gold Max A
Daily Room & Board $460 (Max 120 days) As charged
Daily Intensive Care Unit $920 (Max 30 days) As charged
Other Hospital Services
(Including implants)		 $5,000 As charged
Surgical Benefit
(Surgeon’s fee more than $1500 subjected to Surgical Schedule in Private Hospital)		 $10,000 As charged
(No surgical table requirement)
Daily In-hospital Doctor’s Consultation $60 As charged
Pre- & Post-Hospital bills $1000
(90-days before admission & 90-days after discharge)		 As charged
(100-days before admission & 100-days after discharge)
Emergency Accidental Outpatient Treatment $1,500 NIL
Geographical coverage Worldwide Singapore
Death Benefit $10,000 $5,000
Outpatient Kidney Dialysis & Cancer treatment $10,000 As charged
Rehabilitation Benefit $5,000 As charged
Pre-existing condition Waiting period of 1 year NIL
Living Donor Organ Transplant (As the donor) NIL $60,000 per transplant
Living Donor Organ Transplant (For 3rd-party who’s the donor) NIL $60,000 per transplant
In-patient Psychiatric Treatment NIL $5,000
Deductible & Co-Insurance NIL $3500 deductible & 10% Co-insurance in Private Hospital
Waiver of per Benefit limits in Singapore Government Hospital Yes
$20,000 overall limit		 Not applicable
Maximum age of coverage 70 (last birthday) Lifetime
GST claimable No (for older plans) Yes

From the table, you can see that GHS is a good supplementary plan to Shield plans, especially for employees who travel a fair bit. But as a standalone plan, it simply isn’t sufficient to cover all the bases.

GHS Claims

For companies that issue Letter of Guarantee, it is fairly simple for employees. Just produce the letter at the point of admission. Most of the time, however, Singaporean & PR will just claim from their Shield plans and submit any shortfall to their company for claims.

For Foreigners, you’d have to settle the full bill upon discharge unless, you’re covered under something similar to AIA GHS with Express Claims Process where the Hospital’s Business department will contact AIA Claims department for a fast-track assessment to settle some of the bills upon discharge. Just take note that this facility is only available during working hours from Monday to Friday for AIA. Please check with your HR manager to see if your company is covered this way.

At this time, I’d like to mention that GHS is a General Insurance where risk underwriting is based on indemnity. What this mean is, General Insurance covers assets & liabilities, which has a cap on the dollar value, unlike Life Insurance where a life is priceless and there’s no upper limits to that life.

During claims, Group Insurance claims officers will based their claims assessment 100% on the policy wording with no exceptions. Therefore, it’s much harder to appeal for increased claims payout, even the so-called ‘good-will’ claims.

On top of that, a company at most will have thousands of employees and insurers will try their best to make sure the policy is profitable to them. So during appeals, insurers will also look at the claim experience of the company, i.e., how much is claimed so far, versus how much premium was collected from the company for that year.

This contrasts greatly with Life insurance where the portfolio is MUCH bigger so even a $100,000 medical claim isn’t going to make the portfolio unprofitable. And since Life is priceless, Life Insurers in Singapore are much more willing to bend the rules to pay claims.

This is the reason why, even within the same insurance company, the same claim can be rejected by their Group insurance but accepted by their Life insurance claims department.

Which is why I always advise Foreigners to also get a personal Hospitalisation Insurance in Singapore. What if you’re so sick, you can’t go back to your home country for treatment because the airline wouldn’t allow it?

All comments and questions are welcome. Be sure to like this article if it’s useful and share it with your friends and family, or colleagues who can benefit from it! Button are all over my website just waiting for you to click them! 🙂

Click the Follow Button button at the bottom right to receive more financial and insurance related article written by me! Or follow me on Twitter to see what I’m reading and writing.

2
Fatherhood, Finance & Insurance, Man Matter, Solutions

Maximising the Supplementary Retirement Scheme

Posted on by Eric Tay

What is SRS?

Most people are familiar with CPF OA, SA & MediSave, and what you can do with each account. CPF also manages another account for Singaporeans/PRs & even Foreigners, it called Supplementary Retirement Scheme or SRS.

SRS is primarily used as a tax relief scheme in Singapore due to the compulsory Minimum Sum Scheme that feeds in the CPF Life pension fund for Singaporeans & PR. For Foreigners, who lack other means of tax relief, the maximum SRS tax relief is higher.

Most people who contribute to SRS knows you can use 100% of the funds for saving and investment purposes. However, due to the volatility of the markets this past few years, many had withheld their investments.

Tax Relief

If you go to IRAS website, you can find the Tax calculator. For readers earning more than $50,000 gross income, it’s worth taking a look at it even if your other Tax reliefs reduces your Tax liability to roughly $1000 per year. If your gross income is more than $100,000, it’s time to pay attention!

Assuming you have max out all your other relief and you still have to pay a sizable income tax every year, SRS is a viable tax relief to consider. Check out the table below.

This table is for calendar year 2015 where assessment is done in 2016. Maximum SRS is $12,750 for Singaporeans & PRs, and $29,750 for foreigners. For the purpose of illustration, I’m ignoring the 50% rebate (capped at $1000) on payable Income Tax due to SG50, and the table is calculated for Singaporeans and PRs only. Foreigners will jump down 2 tax brackets so the potential tax savings is doubled!

Income bracket after other relief Tax payable Tax Payable after SRS Tax Savings
$40,000.00 $550.00 $145.00 $405.00
$50,000.00 $1,250.00 $453.75 $796.25
$60,000.00 $1,950.00 $1,057.50 $892.50
$70,000.00 $2,650.00 $1,757.50 $892.50
$80,000.00 $3,350.00 $2,457.50 $892.50
$90,000.00 $4,500.00 $3,157.50 $1,342.50
$100,000.00 $5,650.00 $4,183.75 $1,466.25
$120,000.00 $7,950.00 $6,483.75 $1,466.25
$130,000.00 $9,450.00 $7,633.75 $1,816.25
$140,000.00 $10,950.00 $9,037.50 $1,912.50
$150,000.00 $12,450.00 $10,537.50 $1,912.50
$160,000.00 $13,950.00 $12,037.50 $1,912.50
$170,000.00 $15,650.00 $13,537.50 $2,112.50
$180,000.00 $17,350.00 $15,182.50 $2,167.50
$190,000.00 $19,050.00 $16,882.50 $2,167.50
$200,000.00 $20,750.00 $18,582.50 $2,167.50
$210,000.00 $22,550.00 $20,282.50 $2,267.50
$220,000.00 $24,350.00 $22,055.00 $2,295.00
$230,000.00 $26,150.00 $23,855.00 $2,295.00
$240,000.00 $27,950.00 $25,655.00 $2,295.00
$250,000.00 $29,750.00 $27,455.00 $2,295.00
$260,000.00 $31,550.00 $29,255.00 $2,295.00
$270,000.00 $33,350.00 $31,055.00 $2,295.00
$280,000.00 $35,150.00 $32,855.00 $2,295.00
$290,000.00 $36,950.00 $34,655.00 $2,295.00
$300,000.00 $38,750.00 $36,455.00 $2,295.00
$310,000.00 $40,550.00 $38,255.00 $2,295.00
$320,000.00 $42,350.00 $40,055.00 $2,295.00
$330,000.00 $44,350.00 $41,855.00 $2,495.00
$340,000.00 $46,350.00 $43,800.00 $2,550.00
$350,000.00 $48,350.00 $45,800.00 $2,550.00
$500,000.00 + $78,350.00 $75,800.00 $2,550.00

It is important to note that SRS tax relief should be viewed as a tax deferment scheme because after you retire, any funds withdrawn will STILL be subjected to Income Tax. Fortunately, only 50% of the withdrawn amount is taxable.

Investment opportunities for SRS funds

SRS pays out a 0.5% interest per annum, which until last year was an attractive safe investment return compared to Fixed Deposit. Investors looking for higher returns typically invest in unit trust funds or structured funds of some sort. However, higher risks funds are negatively impacted recently due to market forces.

Fortunately, AIA just introduced a new product in 2015 to cater to savvy investors looking for a safer investment instrument while beating inflation. As I’m not allowed to advertise any insurance & investment products, all I can say is this is an SRS lump sum endowment product that gives a guaranteed monthly annuity for a period of 15 or 20 years starting from the retirement age.

For more information, please email me directly and reference this article in the email.

Limitations of SRS

To prevent money laundering and tax evasion, limitations are placed on SRS funds, whether invested or not.

There is a limit on how much cash you can inject into SRS to qualify for tax relief. This figure is revised yearly. For example, maximum SRS tax relief is $12,750 for FY2015 while in FY2016, this is increased to $15,300 for Singaporeans/PRs and $35,700 for foreigners.

Withdrawals from SRS are also governed by a strict set of rules which can be found here. The most important of which is, early withdrawal before the statutory retirement age causes the withdrawal amount to be 100% taxable + a 5% penalty on the withdrawal amount. Investment returns are also 50% taxable even after the statutory retirement age.

Despite these restrictions, if your investment returns can beat the penalty + additional load to your Income Tax for that year, it’s still a worthwhile tax relief.

All comments and questions are welcome. Be sure to like this article if it’s useful and share it with your friends and family, or colleagues who can benefit from it! Button are all over my website just waiting for you to click them! 🙂

Click the Follow Button button at the bottom right to receive more financial and insurance related article written by me! Or follow me on Twitter to see what I’m reading.

 

0
Uncategorized

2015 in review

Posted on by Eric Tay

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 45,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 17 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Opinions

2015 – Merry Christmas everyone!

Posted on by Eric Tay

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!!!

As the year 2016 approaches, I look back at my year as a Father, a Financial advisor and Blogger.

As a full time Financial Advisor, my main concern is taking care of my clients. 2015 has been a rather average year in terms of production, mainly because a large bulk of my time has been used to solve many teething issues caused by AIA’s upgrading of backend systems.

I’m grateful to you, my clients and friends, for bearing with the lag while I process your requests and claims. Thank you!

And also, I have to thank AIA Claims Department for being very supportive, and for promptly processing all of my clients’ claims despite some system issues.

These upgrades allows advisors such as myself to have an Integrated Point-of-Sales (iPOS) + Customer Relations Management (CRM) platform that is mostly offline. This improves the customer experience because data can be accessed quickly and is consolidated in an easy to understand manner.

The new platform enhances the current experience where most requests (including client signature) can already be made via iPOS and uploaded to AIA for processing immediately.

Moving into 2016, we are looking forward to the new CRM system which will really improve the professionalism of our advisors while reducing our workload. Currently, Policy Reviews and Financial Planning is done by hand with Financial calculators and Excel Spreadsheets. The new CRM will consolidate client’s current portfolio and highlight any shortfall or surplus during review.

As a Financial Advisor and Tech Blogger, I’m personally VERY EXCITED about this new iPOS+CRM system.

As a blogger, year 2015 saw the biggest increase in viewership since I started blogging in Oct 2011. As of now, I have more than 44000 views for 2015, a more than 100% increase from 2014. I’m quite happy with the result so far. Your most popular blog-post is “How to Cheaply convert an Air-con into an Air Purifier”, with more than 13000 views! My posts on MediShield Life also received huge viewership numbers!

Thank you so much for repeat visitors who come back regularly to see if I have added anything new and of course, those of you who explored the content of my blog! You can always subscribe to my blog by clicking on the Follow Button Follow button! I promise NO SPAM!

Moving forward, I will try to post more blogs (time permitting) about saving money by having an alternate use for common items. And of course, since I’m having positive responds for my insurance related posts, I’d post more of those so you can benefit from experiences shared by the beneficiaries.

As a father, the year has been great! My kids are older and more responsible, and they are surprising my wife & myself with their independence and understanding of their surroundings.

And obviously, I have to thank my wife for taking care & educating our kids. I can’t do the good cop / bad cop routine without her! LOL…

For car nuts, I got new shoes for my car! Pilot Sports 3. I’ve also changed the leaking power-steering pump and topped-up the air-con gas. The air-con is super cold now without changing the whole air-con compressor. Now I just need to find a mechanic to repair the leaky connector since the compressor itself is not spoilt, despite what 4 mechanics have told me! Good thing I used to be an engineer! 🙂

Here’s to 2016!

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Finance & Insurance, Health, Solutions

How the new Medisave Additional Withdrawal Limit affect your AIA HealthShield?

Posted on by Eric Tay

Many of my clients have received letters from AIA explaining the new MediSave Additional Withdrawal Limits (AWL) and their first questions is, “Will I have to pay more cash?”

The answer is fortunately, NO!

The new AWL actually INCREASE your withdrawal limit which can be used to pay for your AIA HealthShield plans, so you have to pay less cash if you’re nearing retirement or already retired.

I’ve done up a new post with Tables showing the before/after of how much you need to top up in cash. Check it out below.

AIA HealthShield Gold Max Additional Withdrawal Limit Table

Once I get some sleep, I’d update my original Integrated Plans article to include the latest published information from MOH.

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Solutions

[Chinese Version] YiSpecter: Another iOS Malware That Attacks Non-jailbroken Apple iOS Devices

Posted on by Eric Tay

3周前，帕洛阿尔托单位 42 发布 IOS XCodeGhost 恶意软件已经感染苹果商店内的39个软件。 现在他们又发布了新的恶意软件 YiSpecter感染苹果非越狱的 iPhone 和 iPad。 YiSpecter 使用许多的攻击媒介来实现黑客攻击。最大的区别是它使用企业证书及私人的 API 。

这一级别的复杂通常是与先进的持久性威胁（APT），而不是简单的感染有关。但由于苹果商店有非常严格的检查，我猜他们要去这一级别的成熟才会感染非越狱设备。

我不是说这个公司 （YingMob Interaction）的科技真的很好。因为这5年来已经有很多这类型的恶意软件被广泛使用。

总之，YiSpecter 主要针对在中国及台湾的 iPhone 及 iPad 用户。也许黑客只针对通过简化中文用户。YiSpecter 开始是从受感染的网站，Windows 的腾讯 QQ 聊天软件，和论坛内发出的HTML文件，目标是在 IOS 屏幕上显示色情网址。

在 IOS 8 设备上，如果用户单击对话框中让网址下载应用程序，它是自动安装，因为它包含一个偷来，但有效的企业证书。在 IOS 9，您必须切换的权限来安装企业应用程序，所以新用户受到保护。
然而，如果您已经从 IOS 8 升级，很可能你仍然感染。因为 YiSpecter 是自我保护，可以传播感染作为一个僵尸网络的一部分，而且它有隐藏的功能。

如果你想要知道更多关于YiSpecter的详情，请参见这篇文章的结尾。

要去毒，请按照说明：
  1. 在 iOS, 转到设置 ==》 通用 ==》描述文件，以删除所有未知或不受信任的配置文件;
  2. 删除这些软件，“情涩播放器”，“快播私密版” 或 “快播0”;
  3. 使用任何第三方 iOS 管理工具，例如 iFunBox 在 Windows 或者 Mac OS X，用来连接您的 iPhone 或 iPad（注意苹果 iTunes 不能使用）；
  4. 在管理工具中，检查所有已安装的 iOS 应用程序；如果有一些应用程序有名字，比如手机， 天气， 游戏中心， 存折， 笔记或 Cydia，请把它们删除。(请注意，此步骤不会影响原始系统应用程序，但只是伪造的删除恶意软件)。

资料来源:
YiSpecter: First iOS Malware That Attacks Non-jailbroken Apple iOS Devices by Abusing Private APIs

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