Came across another case of what I think is one of the worst examples of “bad practice” in our industry…a retirement annuity through a life insurance company with a term beyond age 55 and with a 20% escalation on the premium. While I accept that the
Some years back the government and National Treasury made an impassioned plea to the life insurance industry to clean up its act. As far as they were concerned there were too many bad products with too many confiscatory penalties and high costs where
For some reason I have had a lot of enquiries in the past few weeks about the minimum amounts that one can invest on a monthly and/or lump sum basis. The enquiries all seem to be of the view that investing is out of the range of the “little guy” and
I was recently asked by the editor of Finweek what I thought of Sanlam's "new" RA. Here is my response: “On a level, Sanlam could be applauded for trying to encourage saving for retirement in SA. However, it is my belief that anyone that can offer
We were treated to an excellent meal at Pomegranate Restaurant at Vergenoegd wine estate near to Stellenbosch yesterday. It was a stunning day in Cape Town and we sat outside and afterwards we were treated a rather unusual sight; a duck parade! The f
I had an interesting meeting with a young client recently who was at great pains to tell me that he had managed to get off the company pension fund because they were taking too much money off his salary each month and the fund was far too boring for
The following is a piece I did for Finweek in response to a question from a reader.... Investment for a 26 year old. Broadly speaking, there are 2 things that impact the return of an investment over time. They are: Asset allocation, and F
A short while ago I wrote a piece about Outsurance’s latest campaign which offers all your premiums back after 15 years if you don’t claim. Following on from the piece I was interviewed on the Money Show on 567/702 about why I thought the campaign wa
Last week I wrote a post about the Outsurance Life 15 year premiums back offer...as a result of the post I was interviewed on 576/702 The Money Show by Bruce Whitfield (Thurs 20 June - podcast here http://t.co/fPMCokr5eH ) Immediately after that,
Spent over an hour in the queue at Home Affairs last week just waiting to collect a passport for my daughter…it was sent to them on 13th May but more than 2 weeks later we still had not received the SMS to collect it so I went in to see if I could ge
•Asset Allocation Strategy
•Investment Research and Selection
•Local and Offshore Investing
•Tax Efficient Planning
