I would like to bring to everyone’s attention to the unscrupulous and unethical behavior engaged in by insurance companies and their agents in selling insurance policies by:

not providing truthful information regarding the policy,

by failing to highlight limitations and restrictions of the policy and

blatantly exaggerating the merits of their policy just to make a sale.

In 1988, upon the death of my father, my mother took out a money-back policy with a local insurance firm which has since been taken over by an international insurance giant.

The agent had apparently convinced my illiterate mother that she stood to receive a lump sum payment of RM50,000 (almost double the amount of premium paid) upon the maturity of the policy.

While my mother may be uneducated, she is no fool and assiduously paid her premium without fail every year with the expectation that she stood to receive RM50,000 at the policy’s expiry.

Imagine her shock when she received a letter from the company stating that she will only receive the total sum of premiums paid thus far, less extras paid for rider benefits.

We subsequently wrote a letter to the company to highlight her predicament and provided all the necessary details, including the name of the agent and also the agency manager who had sold her the policy.

However, instead of even showing a modicum of warmth, compassion and remorse, the letter set out the details of the policy, and finally claimed that their calculation was correct.

We are not disputing what is stated in the policy. Our bone of contention is that an agent of the company, without morals and scruples, may have deliberately conned my poor, uneducated, illiterate mother (then still suffering from the effects of losing her husband) into investing in an insurance policy by blatantly painting a wrong picture of what she stood to gain from the policy.

Insurance companies must exercise greater control over what their agents are doing and not rubbish customers’ complaints by simply shrugging them off. Many people put their hard earned money into insurance policies with the expectation that their lives or that of their dependents will be better in the future.

Imagine their confusion, hurt, anger and anguish when they find out they have been unwittingly taken on a nasty ride by insurance companies and their agents.

We expect giant insurance companies to not only fawn over and fan the egos of their rich clients. At the same time, they should show some degree of respect to the millions of their small-time policy holders.