The Risks of Unregulated Investments in Singapore

In the ST Forum today, one Gabriel Chua writes as follows:

"I would like the authorities to explain the regulatory framework governing all forms of investments where money is collected from Singaporeans and invested overseas.

We have solid regulations governing finance firms, financial advisers, securities, futures, fund management and so on.

Yet we have heard of how many Singaporeans have lost money investing in overseas properties sold in Singapore.

We have strong regulations governing financial advisers who want to sell even $1,000 of unit trust investments. Do we have the same for companies set up here to collect money from Singaporeans for investments in their own country?"

Gabriel has correctly identified a gap in Singapore's laws.

In general, you can be quite confident that in Singapore, your insurance agent or financial adviser holds the proper licence to do his job. Also, banks and insurance companies all have to get a MAS licence, before they can do business here.

And if you buy land or property in Singapore, government bodies such as the HDB, the URA, the BCA and the Singapore Land Authority all do their part to ensure that the system is reasonably reliable.

But some other types of investments fly almost completely under the regulatory radar.

I have personally come across two examples. The first is fine wines. The second is foreign land. I'll just discuss the latter.

I once received a call from a telemarketer. She invited my wife and I to high tea at a 5-star hotel. She also promised that in return for our attendance, we would be given $100 worth of shopping vouchers (I think it was Tangs or Metro) .

The requirement? We had to sit through a 60-minute presentation. No obligation to buy anything. But we had to sit and listen for a full hour.

My wife and I attended. The conference hall was crowded, filled with many Singaporeans like ourselves. As we enjoyed our high tea, a lady came to our table and did her presentation. She carried a laptop, ran a Powerpoint slide show and discussed various brochures, maps and legal documents with us.

It was all about investing in a certain big, empty piece of land in the United Kingdom.

You didn't have to be super rich to participate either. The entry level was not high. Here's how the investment scheme worked.

The land in question was neatly divided into thousands of parcels (think of a grid of many, many small squares, superimposed on a big map). You could choose the specific parcels of land you wanted to buy.

Suppose the average price of one parcel was $5,000. If you wanted to invest just $5,000, you would buy just one parcel of land. If you wanted to invest $10,000, you would buy two parcels. And if you were very rich, you could plonk down. say, $5 million and buy 1,000 parcels of the land.

You could buy as many or as few parcels as you wanted.

I was told that the company was marketing this scheme to people in Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. The whole idea of the exercise was to round up enough Asians to collectively pool their money and buy the entire piece of land. One fine day (and it could be many years later) the company would help them to sell the land for a good price, and each investor would then get his or her share of the profit.

I didn't invest any of my money.

I did ask lots of questions. My wife and I are both lawyers, and we found it interesting trying to work out the legal structure. The sales lady couldn't answer some of our questions, but she did get her boss to come and explain. He was a European businessman (a Finn, I believe), sophisticated and knowledgeable, and he gave reasonably good, clear answers.

Anyway, in the end, while we understood the legal structure, we felt that we didn't understand the market risks well enough. (I personally know nothing about land anywhere except in Singapore).

So we finished our coffee and snacks, and said, "Thank you, we will not be investing in this. Now can we have our free shopping vouchers?". We duly collected our free $100 shopping vouchers and left.

I should add that at this event, there was no hard sell. Right from the start, they had said that they would not use any unscrupulous tactics to pressure us to buy, and this was true - there were no unscrupulous tactics.

Nevertheless, the incongruity is undeniable.

You can't sell a $5,000 unit trust investment to an uneducated grandmother in Singapore, unless you hold the necessary licence and comply with all the MAS rules and regulations. The licence, and the rules and regulations, are to help safeguard the grandmother's interests.

But you can sell the same grandmother a $5,000 parcel of land, situated in a country far, far away, under a complex collective land ownership scheme. You don't need any licence. Nor does the Singapore government seem to know or care whether the land really exists; or what you tell or do not tell the grandmother; or what documents you ask her to sign.

Some potential for a disaster there. Right?

Kids, Dentists and Other Exciting Adventures

ST 30 Dec 2009
Pulling child's tooth ends in bite
and slaps

I WOULD like to express my dissatisfaction with Eastern Dental Surgery at Jurong West branch. I visited the dentist on Monday at 8.40am because my five-year-old son had a toothache. My son cried aloud when he went in. The dentist managed to give him two injections but with the third one, he was unable to bear the pain and tried to close his mouth, thus biting the dentist's finger which was inside his mouth.

The dentist shouted loudly: 'You dare to bite my finger, I beat you.' Then she gave my son three slaps on his arm. I was shocked and the next moment, she shouted: 'I don't want to pull his teeth any more, since he bit my finger. Ask them to pay up.'

The next minute I was chased out of the door and asked to pay $18. My son was so frightened he shivered non-stop and tears kept rolling down his cheeks.

I do not think this is the right way to deal with a five-year-old patient. If the dental clinic accepts children as patients, the dentist should not beat them if they are not cooperative. My son told me he does not want to visit a dentist ever again.

Chua Ying Jie (Ms)

I found the above quite funny. If I were Ms Chua herself, or the kid, or the bitten dentist, I would not have found it funny. But since I'm none of these persons, I must say I do find it quite funny.

It reminds me of an incident in my own childhood. I must have been around five or six then. I had a toothache and my father brought me to a dentist. But I was so scared that I would not open my mouth at all. I didn't bite the dentist, but I resolutely kept my mouth closed. After an hour or so, the dentist gave up and my scowling father had to bring me home.

Alternative extraction method.

My wife and I have been more expert, in handling our own children. The trick is to bring your little kids for a routine dental check-up, long before they ever have any toothache. Under non-painful, non-traumatic conditions, the kid will be easily persuaded to open his mouth. Thereafter he will get used to the idea of having dental check-ups.

Also, if you are going for your own routine dental cleaning/scaling, you can bring your kid along to watch. Then the kid will see that dentists are nice people and there's nothing particularly scary about visiting a dentist.

(But don't bring your kid, if you are getting your wisdom tooth extracted. Because that is scary).

The dental clinic I go to is GPA Dental, at United Square. They have got the coolest technological gadgets I have ever seen in any dental clinic. There's a small touch of James Bond, in their toys.

One of them is a wireless intra oral camera, with a macro lens, a built-in light etc. With this little device, the dentist can take close-up, high-pixel, full-color photos of your teeth, from right inside your mouth. These photos are transmitted to a computer and you can immediately view them on a mounted TV screen. The dentist will store these photos in his computer, as part of your dental records.

Writers, Photographers, NS and Saving The Trees

Did I ever mention that I really enjoyed my NS? A big part of it, anyway. My military vocation was a rare one. It was "writer". Yes, believe it or not, there is such a vocation, and my job was to write for Pioneer, the SAF magazine.

Half the week I would be touring different military bases (not just the army, but also the air force and the navy). The other half of the week I would be in my Mindef office, writing articles about the people I had interviewed and the events that I had witnessed.

I also had an NSF driver to drive me around, and an NSF photographer to take photos for my articles. It was fun.

Getting that job was like striking the lottery. Out of maybe 18,000 or 20,000 NSFs in my entire cohort, only two became "writers" (me and another guy). I can honestly say that neither of us was a "white horse". We didn't have dads or uncles who were brigadier-generals or perm secs.

Instead we were hand-picked for our writing ability. We were also selected for our confidence levels. (When you are 18 years old and just a chao private, you really do need confidence, to interview a senior guy like a brigade commander, or the Chief of Navy, or the Minister of Defence).

There was another NSF guy - his vocation was "translator". His job was to translate our articles, for the Chinese edition of Pioneer (not such a fun job, since he didn't get to go out of the office). His command of English and Chinese was formidable. At that age, he was already writing serious plays in English, and serious poetry in Chinese.

(As a matter of fact, I just tried to google his name. If I've found the right guy, then this year he just directed a bilingual theatrical production, and also won an award for Chinese poetry).

Oh yeah, and my NSF photographer friend. He later became a professional photographer and one year he even won Singapore's Young Artist of the Year award (for photography). You can see some of his stunningly evocative and beautiful pictures here, here and here. Heck, I'll post one photo on my blog - I don't think he would mind.



Photo by Ken Seet

Ken even knows how to make SAF soldiers look cool. Check out the 56 military photographs available here.

You have to be a little impressed about how Pioneer has consistently managed to identify 18-year-olds with talent in writing or photography. Pioneer's alumni NSFs include people like Russel Wong, Adrian Tan, Colin Cheong, Simon Tay and Warren Fernandez. If my memory serves me correctly, once upon a time the ever-incisive Cherian George was also an NSF Pioneer writer.

Anyway, why am I writing all this today? Because I just read someone's blog post, and it reminded me of my NS days. The post is entitled How to Cancel Your Pioneer Subscription, and it goes like this:

Just go to this URL, fill in your particulars; type in some reasons, such as: you prefer reading the cyber version to save the Earth or your family is receiving duplicate copies; request to unsubscribe; then click SUBMIT. That’s it.

Here’s a template:


Dear Sir/Mdm,

I would like to unsubscribe and stop receiving Pioneer magazine in my mailbox as I prefer reading the online version for environmental reasons.

Thank you and hope to hear from you soon.

Best Regards,
XXXXXXXX

I cancelled mine once I ORDed years ago.

Frankly, the magazine is a waste of paper and money. Help spread the word along to save the Earth as I believe most people will just chuck their Pioneer magazine straight into the waste paper bin without even tearing open the plastic wrapper.

Subscription is forced for all NSF at 40 cents per issue (if not I would have cancelled it immediately after getting my first issue). It’s cheap, but it’s still money. Not cancelling it will be wasteful as I am not interested in reading news about SAF. Moreover, there’s the online version (slightly different) which is better for the environment if you really want to read.

The Singapore government is moving towards an advanced e-government model, encouraging Singaporeans to do more government transactions and queries online. Why is the SAF always a few steps behind?

At the very least, the cost of the magazine should be absorbed by SAF, given that NS and reservist are national obligations for Singapore males who are rendering a
service for the nation.

Well, I won't pretend to be too sad.

I truly enjoyed my NS at Pioneer. I got to know some very talented young folks. I also had the chance to meet and write about all kinds of people in the SAF - from defence scientists and BMT recruits, to the elite Naval divers and the Commandos.

And while I was at Pioneer, I always did my best to write good, solid articles that gave due respect and credit to the people featured in them.

However, shortly after I ORD'd, I too cancelled my own Pioneer subscription.

The simple truth is that the SAF is a conscript army, and most of the conscripts aren't that interested in the SAF. The average NSman does want to know about things that directly affect him, such as new IPPT rules, or increases in SAF allowances. But not much more than that.

Most of us wouldn't want to read about yet another OCS commissioning parade. Or yet another upgrade of an old piece of military hardware. Or yet another overseas training exercise - unless it involved our own unit. Maybe not even then.

Also, you can't argue with the "let's save paper" environmental point. Well, I don't know how to argue with it anyway. Years ago, I cancelled my subscription to the print edition of the Straits Times .... for the same reason.

The Supplementary Retirement Scheme

Oops, it's that time of year again. Need to rush down to the bank and deposit the usual $11,475, before the 31 December deadline. This will reduce my income tax by exactly $2,295 next year.

Yes, I am referring to the Supplementary Retirement Scheme. For full details, click this link - you'll get the Finance Ministry's official explanation of the SRS.

The SRS is nothing new - it was introduced about a decade ago - yet many Singaporeans do not seem to know about it. Briefly, it's a voluntary government scheme which provides tax benefits to encourage people to save and invest for their own retirement years.

I think that the SRS is a good idea. Not necessarily for all people (because everyone has his or her own unique financial circumstances). But the SRS could definitely be a good idea for many people.

However, I realise that the SRS might not be that easy to understand. Take for example the blogger at Salary.Sg. In general, his articles are very informative and well-written, and I've enjoyed reading many of them. However, his recent post about the SRS - entitled What's Not Good about the SRS - struck me as a little disastrous.

The blogger discussed the SRS and concluded that it was basically a terrible thing and you would be foolish to use it. However, his explanation was not convincing and he clearly didn't know (or didn't appreciate) the finer points of what you can do with your SRS monies. (On the plus side, several of his readers did respond with good comments, to correct the shortcomings of the article).

In general, the SRS works best for (1) the higher earners, and (2) people who are interested and committed to a long-term plan of building up their retirement funds. It may also make sense for working people who are, say, already in their 50s and do not foresee having to meet any major financial expenses between now and their retirement age.

Also, the SRS has some uses for income earners who foresee that in the future, there will be a year, or two, or three, when their taxable income will dwindle sharply (for example, the person might be planning to temporarily stop work to pursue higher studies, or to look after the kids at home).

My advice to you is to at least find out how the SRS works. Then you can make an informed decision as to whether it is for you or not.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

'Tis the season when I grow jolly and quiet and busy, all at the same time. As I reflect on the big picture of life, I see the hits, the misses, the hugs and kisses, and all the new adventures that lie ahead in 2010. Life is a rich and colourful place, and I am glad to be here.

Right now, my left brain and the right brain are getting together to talk and sing and plan and imagine a few possibilities. I've made a list of things I want to do in 2010, and a list of things I need to do, and a list of "maybe" things.

Some details are sketchy - but is that not how life behaves? There's only so much that we can foresee and predict. Life itself will fill in the blanks as we go with its flow.

Oh yeah. I spent some time thinking about what to do with this blog in 2010. One possibility was to delete it and quit blogging. Nahhh, I told myself, that is a little too drastic. On the other hand, it is true that the original raison d'etre of this blog (and its predecessor, Mr Wang Bakes Good Karma) has already been fulfilled.

When Mr Wang first started blogging in 2005, the Singapore blogosphere was pretty much a ghost town, as far as discussion of social, political and economic issues were concerned. My goal was to help plant the seeds for a more active, socially aware blogosphere - to encourage debate, to encourage participation, to get more people to come forward and express their views too.

Back then - I know that many of you would have forgotten by now - some readers were hesitant even to leave anonymous comments on a blog. They feared that somehow, the evil PAP government would find a technological way to identify and track them down. And who knows what the PAP might do then? Blacklist their HDB application; their scholarship application; their job application; or worse, get the ISD to arrest them.

That was our kind of Internet culture, back then. That was the climate in Singapore, generally. We've come a long way since then. Not saying that everything is all flowers and beauty right now - it's not. But today the local blogosphere is certainly much bigger, much more active, less fearful, than it used to be. Many, many more Singaporeans (ok, PRs and foreigners too) are blogging to express their views about what's good, what's bad and what can be improved about Singapore. Furthermore things have reached a point when the government can no longer not acknowledge the existence of views, opinions and concerns expressed on the Internet.

And with that - Mr Wang will ... well, not exactly retire from writing about social issues etc. But Mr Wang will definitely feel much more at liberty, to venture into new sorts of topics, different sorts of themes, all in the great new year of 2010.

See you then. Happy New Year!