EDMW: OCBC shattered my retirement plans

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

http://forums.$$$$$$$$$$$$.com.sg/ea...s-5341504.html

Hi, not sure if you guys have been through this, but someone I know shared his unpleasant experience with OCBC, and I’m helping them to spread the word as they are not proficient in English. Here’s their story:

“Our encounter with OCBC Premier Banking has been a living nightmare; we are sharing our experience to raise awareness of the bank’s ruthless tactics behind its smiling public facade.

Our bank Relationship Manager sold us a ‘4 month SGD Equity Fix Coupon Quanto Callable Investment’ product when we asked for a short-term savings plan or stable investment to allow us to earn a small incentive for our nearing retirement. We had some concerns regarding the choice of shares initially, but she assured us that the bank’s investment experts will assist in choosing shares with high growth potential, and even claimed that some of her customers were already earning profits. We were not sophisticated investors and were definitely not interested in high-risk investments, but she continually assured us of the stability of this investment, so we signed the deal under the impression that it was a stable short term investment with satisfactory returns.

Everything went well for the first 3 months until just before the maturity date, when she informed us that our investment had incurred a loss and advised us to hold it until it recovers. We had no access to any stock exchange or share price information, until the 7th month when we received a wealth report from the bank indicating, to our horror, that our investment value had dropped by more than half, and is now worth almost nothing.
We requested for a market analysis report of the company share and realized that the company was in fact a very unstable and high-risk one, unlike what our Relationship Manager described. There was no transparency in the entire transaction.

We appealed to their management and subsequently their Customer Assurance team to no avail, and the latter shook us off by asking us to seek resolution through FIDReC which handles up to only S$50k per claim – barely half of what we have invested.

Every cent we saved and every carefully crafted plan we made over the years to pave the way for a smooth retirement – which seemed so close within our reach after decades of tireless work – had to be halted. Plans changed. Dreams shattered.

We came to the bank to deposit our hard-earned savings with trust and hope to earn some incentive to support our retirement but instead it cost us almost everything we invested within just a few months. We hope our story will prevent others from being put through the same ordeal.”

Moral of the story: If you are daft, please put all your retirement monies inside CPF.


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