I recently had a most disturbing (if not revealing) conversation with a board member of ASISA (the association for savings and investments in South Africa). But before I proceed, a bit of background and history on ASISA. The following is taken directly from the ASISA website www.asisa.co.za. (If you already know all of this then scroll down to “At the beginning of July…”) ASISA was formed in 2008 by members of the Association of...

I came across a 76 year old lady this morning who was sold a 10 year endowment at the age of 71 (through Old Mutual Horizons) for R10000 per month (yes, ten thousand rand!). 5 years later her situation has changed, she cant afford the premium anymore and needs to make a change…surprise, surprise, she is going to receive huge penalties for doing this. This is just wrong and I dont care how anyone might try to justify this, there is no...

One of the things that I just cant get my head around is the price of residential property. If the experts are to be believed, then the average house price in SA is somewhere around R550000. In order to buy this property, you would need to put down a deposit of at least R110000 (20%) and would then have to pay off a bond of R440000. With the prime rate at 11% and assuming you could get 0.5% below prime (not nearly as easy as it used to be)...

The latest developments in the Ovation Curatorship saga potentially have major ramifications for the entire unit trust and linked product industry and it is high time that the industry (ASISA and the FSB) woke up to that fact. As I understand the development, the Fidentia Curators are wanting to block the application by the Ovation Curators to release investors funds from Ovation (90% at this stage with the balance to be released once the...

I met with a new client recently who proudly proclaimed that she was a “low risk investor” while passing me her unit trust statement. She has R1.1 million in a money market unit trust fund and it has been there for a few years. While this might have been a good thing (from one perspective) over the past 2 years, I pointed out to her that while she was in “low volatility” portfolio, she had actually turned herself into a high risk...

I admit that this is written with a lot of emotion but there have got to be few things that are worse for investors than life insurance savings products. Whether they are endowment policies or retirement annuities (new age or traditional) they have got to be the worst thing that an investor can buy! I just cant understand how in 2009, when research shows that the average person will change jobs at least half dozen times during their working...