An unfortunate event happened to our family of recent where my wife was diagnosed of Secondary Postpartum Hemorrhage which is excessive bleeding after childbirth. This happened about 10 days after we have discharged from hospital after giving birth.
We are blessed that both mother and child are fine after the incident. However our total hospital bill came up close to S$ 24,000.
During our hospital stay, we were still thankful we had been insuring with NTUC Income for the last 5 years or more.
We texted our insurance agent on our plight and his exact reply was ” Can submit as normal to access. Should be able to cover. Rgds”
We went on to download the product brochure and found nothing amiss and we are only required to pay 10% of the total bill as stated in the brochure.
Days later, NTUC Income wrote to us that our claim was rejected based on exclusion terms which are not stated in the product brochure but in another document under terms and conditions.
Naturally we felt cheated and at the same time we have ourselves to blame by not going into details of the contract and being too trusting on NTUC Income.
We also found that our claim would have been processed without a doubt with their competitor Great Eastern Life with a similar annual premium amount.(S$ 10 to be exact)
By comparing the two products, we also found NTUC Income to be guilty of irresponsible marketing with their Television advertisements and brochures. Their salespeople also do not have the necessary product knowledge and oversells their product and make misleading or false statements.
In general we felt we have been misled to buy the product, not knowing it has limited coverage compared to another insurer.If we have known the product to have limited coverage, we would not have signed with NTUC INCOME given the fact their competitor has a similar premium despite having a deductible.
We were misled from their product brochure, TV advertisements and their salesperson with the points below.
1) Hiding of necessary information in the product brochure.
NTUC INCOME BROCHURE EXCERPT A
From above brochure excerpt, it is stated under Pregnancy Complications under as charged with no further annotations to explain further it only cover few specific complications.
NTUC INCOME BROCHURE EXCERPT B
They also claim to be a social enterprise which I think is a misleading term to mislead consumers they do not prioritize profits as a whole as an organisation
Under important notes (fine print) , they added the policy is subjected to certain exclusions which cannot be found in the product brochure at all and is under another document terms and conditions which needs to be downloaded separately.
Instead of providing simple and essential information which could be in the product brochure, they chose to hide under fine print and then in a separate document terms and conditions.
Compare it to Great Eastern Life Brochure as below
GREAT EASTERN LIFE BROCHURE EXCERPT A
For Great Eastern Life Brochure, under Pregnancy Complications, they specific a annotation for the user to refer to the footnotes where it is spelled out specifically what are the types of complications covered. Coverage is also more comprehensive than NTUC INCOME.
However as consumers, based on NTUC INCOME deliberate omission of information, we would have found both products similar or even find Great Eastern Life coverage lesser due to the more precise information.
Full NTUC INCOME Brochure can be downloaded as below.
Full Great Eastern Brochure can be downloaded as below.
https://www.greateasternlife.com/sg/en/pdf/brochures/SupremeShield.pdf
Click on the link below to read more.
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