Investing with Generali Itl.

Hello,

Has anyone invested with Generali Intl.? I have some questions, I invested some money with Generali International through this investment company in Hong Kong, I got the generali vision 5 year plan, the plan has come to the end of the 5 year maturity, but the amount I see on the statement is less than the amount I invested, and more, after the maturity date came to an end I contacted the investment company here in HK, requesting for them to make arrangements for my funds to be transfered to my bank account, the broker agent responded that, actually, maturity is not automatic and that I needed to request a surrender of the funds to the company, I replied them that I need the funds asap, so they emailed all this forms asking me to fill them up, including a surrender of funds form,. My question is, is this normal..... why would I have to request a surrender of my funds when the 5 year (in which I didn't make any money, yes this is hard to believe) maturity date have come to an end. Pls., anyone had any similar experience? I also would like to know if there is supposed to be any charges on the closing of the account. I have been reading on the reputation of this company on high fees and commisions.

Thanks

1) There's no charges on closing your account now that it's matured.

2) They should have contacted you before it matured asking what you wanted to do. By default they will let it keep running in the account until you ask to surrender it. This is general practice within the industry as some people may want to keep the money invested until they need it for another purpose.

3) The fees and commissions for those kinds of products, not just Generali, are quite high.

4) Your financial adviser should have been looking after your choice of funds in your plan during the 5 years and given you advice on switching some funds for better choices during that time. To have not made any money during the last five years must have been some pretty poor choices. You should have asked them why it was performing poorly and/or they should have kept you up to date with at least a yearly review and statement.

A lot of people leave things too much in the hands of their financial adviser when they should be asking for yearly reviews.

Hello Lotus Garden,

Unfortunately I had a Generali Visio too but was convinced to buy a 20 year plan by a rogue financial advisor and can advise that Generali has, in my humble opinion, generous fees and my investment devalued by 30% over the 13 years until I cashed it in but the fees deducted remained the same so it made the overall policy so bad I had to surrender it and take another 15% hit.

You should have a look at the policy documents they provide at the beginning & check the fee structure (it was a real eye opener for me) - then check it against your statements and the changes in the various funds.