I read with interest Mary Perkins' letter, Beware the life insurance snare .

It's not just in Malaysia that this sort of things happen. Here in the UK, Equitable Life (a 100-year-old company) has not been able to pay out on its pension policies (it conveniently blames the stock market crash of 2000).

In the US, AIG (who owns among other things AIA in Malaysia) have pleaded guilty to false accounting to the value of billions leading to the sacking of its chairman Maurice Green .

I was once offered life insurance policies by big insurer in the 1960s when buying them was in vogue and salesmen of dubious financial qualifications would ply you with free lunches during office breaks.

Luckily for me, I always have had a cynical view of anyone promising to return my money next week - let alone in 25 years time! I still have that RM40 a month that would have disappeared into the black hole of the insurance industry.

I don't know whether it will be more or less than the RM30,000 they promised me but I do know that money in my pocket is mine but my money with an insurance company is theirs - make no mistake about that. Mary Perkins' case is one good example.

There is no such thing as a free lunch in the insurance business. It's a jungle out there and buyers of insurance premiums should be aware of the small print.