The same ILP plan sold by different Advisors will produce different returns because:

1) Different funds selected.

2) Different percentage of funds allocated.

3) The fund switches done over time.

Would the Advisor monitor your investment plan? Since:

1) The Advisor only earned the commission when the plan was sold, not for monitoring your investment plan.

2) Performing fund switches, would not give any commission to the Advisor.

3) How well the investment plan had performed over time, would not translate to any financial gains to the Advisor.

A Suitable Advisor

Next, you must have a good Advisor to manage your investment.

The Advisor must be Willingly and Competent to do so.

The Advisor must be able to:

Select the funds that you are going to invest (Sound asset allocation)
Monitor the funds that have been invested in (Active monitoring)
Need a good system to manage your investment portfolio (Robust system)

Other Qualities

Knowledgeable:

Must have a deep understanding of the various ILP products and investment markets.

Transparent:

Must be honest and upfront about costs/charges, and potential risks. Do not hide important information.

Responsive:

Responsive to the ever changing situation in the investment market.

Customer-focused:

Mission over commission.

Ethical:

Adhere to the ethical standards and act in the Client’s best interest. We do not recommend products solely for our gain.

Kaizen (A compound of two Japanese words that together translate as "good change" or "improvement)

Continuous upgrade to stay relevant to the market.

Us - The DWP Advisor & Team's Conditions:

From our past experience, it would be beneficial for all parties if:

Must be our existing customers before we are to manage their investments:

Loyalty: Investing for our existing customers can strengthen their loyalty to us. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat buyers and even refer new business to us.
Increased Lifetime Value: By nurturing our existing customer base, you can increase their lifetime value to your business. This includes not just repeat purchases but also upselling or cross-selling additional products or services.

No other active Agents/ Advisors/ Consultants/ Wealth Managers:

They will want to know how we managed our client’s portfolio, to learn our system or to supposedly ensure we are doing a good job for the clients:
- Give us additional and unnecessary work to explain to our clients who will in turn, need to explain to them.

High possibility of sabotage if they are not able to manage the investments as good as us (The "If you can’t win them, destroy them" mentality), by complaining to the Company
- We will need to waste time to address any potential complaints directed to us, which also affects the DWP team dynamics.

Consistent Customer Knowledge Assessment (CKA) and Risk Profile answers, there are checks on the company level and even MAS level to check the consistency of CKA and Risk Profile among customers.
- Will give us needless compliance check if the CKA and Risk Profile answers are not consistent for the same customer across all financial institutions, insurance companies and banks.

Mental health
- No one is paid to monitor the investment plans, so we will prefer not to get ourselves into any issues.

Make use of any opportunities to shake the confidence of our clients by questioning our investment strategies, when the other parties do not know or understand about our investment strategies.
- Clients would be questioning our investment strategies, taking up our valuable time to assure the clients, instead of letting us manage their investments in peace.
- Some clients would liquidate their investments prematurely, under the influence of others, resulting in losses for the clients.

It is important that we can solely focus on managing the investment portfolio than to be concerned about potential competitors trying to undermine our efforts and credibility, in order to compete with us for the clients’ business.

We need Customer who are willing to look into NOT just ILPs with us:

Be fair to the rest of our customers, who have supported us in terms of other insurance business.
Give us business to cover the cost for the significant effort and time used to monitor their investments. Monitoring the investment portfolio will not be profitable over time.

Please RUN FAST! If the Advisor is using Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) to monitor your investment plan...

Please do not trust the Advisor who talks with full of confidence and certainty because no one can be 100% sure of the market, unless the Advisor is a Simpleton...

Sadly, we have lost businesses to "Simpleton" Advisors before... And the customers, in the end, also lost money...

Regrettably, we are not able to help the customers any more...

We lost to "Simpleton" Advisors because of the Dunning-Kruger (DK) effect, which is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills.

For example: If a Simpleton, a good Student, and a wise Teacher were to have a public debate, this is how things could go down.

The Simpleton knows just a little bit, but is very confident and voices his opinions loud and without hesitations. The Student knows more but does not realize it because she lacks confidence. She keeps quiet. The Teacher is confident but understands how complex things really are. Hence he voices his opinions with reservations.

In the end, the Simpleton wins the popular vote, because he is so confident about being right and people tend to trust certainty.

Penalized for being good

The Locksmith -

Scenario:

If one day, John forgot to bring his house keys and was locked outside. He had no choice but to get a Locksmith to pick his house lock. Both of them agreed on the price of $100 to get the door opened.

A) The Locksmith managed to get the house lock picked effortlessly in less than a minute.

As the lock was easily picked in less than a minute, John felt that the price of $100 was too much for less than a minute of work. Hence it was not “Fair” to pay the Locksmith for so much money for such a quick job. John even felt that the Locksmith was out to cheat his money for quoting such a high price of $100 for such a fast and easy task. Either he would hope to reduce the pre-agreed payment of $100 or he would be paying the $100 very unwillingly.

B) The Locksmith only managed to pick the lock after more than an hour with a lot of effort made. John would be appreciative of the Locksmith’s effort and hard work to pick the lock, moreover, he would felt the fee of $100 was well-spent.

Comparing both scenarios, John was definitely in a better position in scenario A, he could get into his house faster. By right, he should reward the Locksmith, in scenario A, for his great skills.

However, the ugly side of human nature would normally kick in and John would most likely bargain and be less appreciative toward the Locksmith who did his job faster and effectively.

Similarly, when we have made profit "easily" for our clients, their expectations became unreasonable and expected us to constantly generate the profit, despite poor market conditions.