(Author’s note: I encountered a post in social media which said IMG and Kaiser are owned by the same group of people and that this is the reason why IMG is pushing Kaiser. I quickly wrote a lengthy reply which I polished a little and reproduce below.)
You will note that the Ayala group of companies, the SM group of companies, the Gokongwei group of companies, the Metrobank group of companies and various other groups of companies have many common directors and incorporators in the different companies within the same group. Interlocking directorates are a common facet of the corporate world. It just means multiple companies in the same group are employing synergies to work and cooperate towards attaining interlocking goals.
For the IMG group, the goal is to help Filipino families achieve financial freedom through financial education, excellent but affordable financial products and powerful business platforms.
Why Does IMG Recommend Kaiser Long Term Health Care?
Most HMO companies today cater to short term healthcare of people who are generally young and healthy. There are very few who cater to senior citizens. Most HMO plans are for employees who are currently working and their dependents. Hence, the moment they resign, or retire, they and their dependents lose their coverage unless the former employee decides to shoulder the substantial costs of premium. In most cases, the resigned or retired employee, and dependent end up with no coverage.
The irony is you get excellent healthcare while you are young and healthy but you do not get healthcare when you are old or sickly or can no longer afford to pay. Most HMOs also have very little life protection coverage for members.
You will note that there are no viable long term healthcare products in the country today, except the Kaiser Ultimate and Kaiser Premium Health Builder products.
The premise of long term health care is very simple and logical.
- pay for your health care today while you are young, and healthy and productive and can afford to pay, then
- enjoy healthcare when you are old, or sickly, or can no longer pay.
If later, you need healthcare and you do not have short term healthcare, use your long term health care plan for hospitalization. If the Lord decides to take you home early, the long term health care plan gives your family the proceeds of life insurance. Hence you use your investment to get health and life protection within the maturity period.
And when the plan matures, you have the option to get the balance of your investment plus earnings, or keep it for future healthcare purposes.
In the case of Kaiser Ultimate, you pay for 7 years, to get 20 years of health AND life protection. On maturity, you can opt to get your investments including all profits/interests, or keep your fund growing at 7 to 10% compounded annual growth rate, definitely much more than the current 0.2% growth in savings accounts. You effectively have health care protection until you have “spent” all your health care investments.
If you paid your HMO for short term plans, and pay for 7 years, you will get 7 years of protection, and no more protection after the 7th year. Whatever benefits are unused at the end of each policy year are gone forever. None of the premiums are paid back to you.
One can avail of Kaiser short- and long-term plans whether one is an IMG member or not. IMG considers Kaiser Ultimate as a complete level 1 investment, and very strongly recommends it, especially to its own members.
Kaiser Ultimate Health Builder is a level 1 product which provides different benefits at different periods
Kaiser Ultimate by itself is difficult to understand.
- If people compare it to short term healthcare, they will say there are better short term plans.
- If people compare it to insurance, they will say there are better insurance options.
- If people compare it to investment, they will say there are better investments.
This is because Kaiser Ultimate is an entry level product designed to give you the most basic and complete initial protection benefits while starting your investment.
- If you think it does not have enough short term health protection, you can complement it with additional health care of your choice
- If you think it does not have enough insurance coverage, you can complement it with additional PhilamMOST group yearly renewable term life insurance (available only to IMG members with active Kaiser long term plan)
- if you think it does not have enough investment value, you can complement it with additional investments in the mutual fund(s) of your choice.
The combination Kaiser Ultimate + Philam MOST + MUtual Funds is unbeatable.
Why Does IMG Recommend the Soldivo Funds?
The Soldivo Bond Fund (a bond fund) and Soldivo Strategic Growth Fund (an equity mutual fund) were launched only in October 2014, at below P1.00 par value. As young funds, they have the potential to aggressively and quickly grow.
SSGF is considered a moderate-to-high risk type of fund, investing in shares of the companies listed in the primary and secondary boards of the Philippine Stock Exchange. Recommended for investors with a higher risk appetite who require the growth potential of the equity markets. Its investment objective is capital growth with returns and inflows derived out of investments in equity securities. This is one of the best options for investors who want to access and capitalize on the immense growth opportunities of the Philippine equity market.
The Soldivo funds are managed by respected personalities in local finance, led by Rex Mendoza, former CEO of Philamlife and former adviser to the group CEO of the AIA Group. Rex Mendoza was also at the helm of Philam Asset Management Inc (PAMI) during the explosive growth years for PAMI mutual funds. We believe the fund management group has the requisite expertise to drive the growth of the funds.
Kaiser International is a major investor in Soldivo funds. The stronger the Soldivo funds are, the more secure the Kaiser investments are, and thus, the better service Kaiser can provide to its members and planholders.
Soldivo mutual funds are available for retail to IMG members only at this time.
IMG includes Soldivo Bond Fund in its list of recommended bond funds, and Soldivo Strategic Growth Fund in its list of recommended equity mutual funds. IMG recommends a combination of bond and equity mutual funds as the preferred mode of paper investment.
What Benefits Do IMG Members Get?
IMG members get
- free lifetime financial education,
- free lifetime financial checkup,
- free lifetime training on insurance, mutual funds,real estate and various money topics
discount/rebates on financial products - opportunity to help others, especially family and friends, save and invest,
- opportunity to earn commission and build a big business
Why don’t you drop by and listen to what we have to say?
Our mission is to help Filipino families achieve financial freedom, NO FAMILY LEFT BEHIND! It starts with learning how money works, then teaching our family and friends how to save, invest and increase cash flow, and then reaching out to extended circles.
About to finish paying our Kaiser. And I’m not happy that I paid it over these five years. (We got the chance to grab the five years since we bought it early 2011) I now advice my friends to not get it. With all my heart I am saying this not because Kaiser is a scam, it’s a legit company, but there are better options. This is my sentiments for two reasons (1)The “long term” they are mentioning here is just actually your own money and not their health care. Also (2) after your paying period you will only have 10% of your plan as your health care benefit [let’s say you grabbed the lowest plan w/c is 35K plan, you will only get 3,500/year as your health care benefit (but of course if you do not use it, it will add to your 3,500 next year and so forth]. My contest is that there are better options than receiving that 10% (w/c in my example is 3,500) PhilHealth can do better than that. Now I am open to correction, so if there will be IMG people here that will see this and realized that my findings here are false, pls do correct me. Cheers!
Hi Manila4610!
During your paying period, were you able to use the policy for hospitalization?
If you were hospitalized, you could have used up to P50k per year for inpatient benefits.
If you did not avail of hospitalization benefits, then at the end of 15 years, you’d get a long term bonus of about P80,000.
The annual P3,500 health benefit to be given to you every year for 10 years, if unused will earn a projected 10% per year, so if you do not use it, the value after 10 additional years will not be just P35,000, it will be more like P61,000.
And at the end of the 10 additional years ( or 15 years from the start ) , if you did not use any benefit, you’d get the equivalent of about P176k.
Since you got the plan 5 years ago, I think you were insured for P115k.
The Kaiser long term plans are basically investments, and admittedly, the yield is not phenomenal.
But remember it is a long term care product, and thus have protection components.
If you were hospitalized during those first 5 years, you could have gotten up to P250k in hospitalization benefits.
If the Lord decided to call you home before the end of 15 years, your dependents would get about P115k in life insurance proceeds.
And if you are healthy for 15 years, you basically get your money back plus interest. You can opt to keep it there and still have 7 to 10% compounded annual growth rate.
And if you use if for HMO purposes , you’d enjoy HMO rates (meaning the bulk discounted rates) even beyond the 15 year period.
This means that your P176k in Kaiser will most probably buy much more healthcare than P176k in cash.
I am sure there are better investment options, but none of those other options included protection features like HMO service, guaranteed admission to accredited hospitals, life insurance, and waiver of premium during the 5 year paying period.
If for example you passed away on the 3rd year of paying, or you were hospitalized during the first year of the plan, I’m sure you’d be saying Kaiser is a terrific plan.
If this explanation is not sufficient, please do not hesitate to seek further clarifications.
Hello yes 🙂 I perfectly understand your points. I’ve been teaching all these for more than four years and like you I am passionate about it 🙂
Here are my thoughts:
1. As for the example, 35K plan, for five years the total contribution is 124K. Now sa maturity date (after 15 years) the subscribed person will get 176+K Pesos (P80,000 bonus you mentioned included). If you will calculate it for the past 15 years her money invested only gets 52K, which is fine but not really good kasi fifteen years is a long time to earn just 52K.
2. The term “long care” that everyone is preaching doesn’t fit well with Kaiser since, this came first hand from Mr. Abragan “pera mo iyun, kaya kahit anong gawin mo, magpa nose lift ka pa wala ng say ang Kaiser doon”
Why is this an issue? Kasi as preached by agents and everyone else, the “long term” benefits are continuation of your “Kaiser benefits” may health care ka hanggang tumanda ka – when in reality it is your own money not “kaiser health care”.
3. Going back to the example, 35K plan (or whatever plan), it is also being preached that “you are secured kasi you have a health care” – after the paying period (starting from 6th year) how will one feel “secured” when Kaiser will only cover 3,500 PER YEAR (regardless kung nag accumulate) no one will ever feel “secured” with that amount.
I do not see my reply to your comment here anymore. What happened? 🙂
Comments are moderated and do not immediately appear. This is to prevent spamming.
I am not very familiar with the Premium product, since now, only the Ultimate product ( 7 year paying and 20 year maturity) is offered to new planholders. I will just extrapolate and assume it is similar to Ultimate.
1. Like I said, it should not be compared with a pure investment.
For example if you paid term insurance, and short term HMO and a pure investment like a mutual fund at the same time.
After 15 years, you can’t compute the total of what you paid for the three products as basis for the computation of your mutual fund yields.
What you paid for term insurance is lost, and you’re glad you’re still alive.
What you paid for short term HMO is lost, and you’re glad you’re still healthy.
Then you expect your investment to grow. ( although we don’t actually know what the exact breakdown is.)
Like I said, if on the other hand, you were hospitalized every year for the first 5 years, and Kaiser paid P50,000 for 5 years, or P250,000, you wouldn’t be complaining about your premiums, right? And even if Kaiser paid the P250k, you could still get up to P100k at the end of the 15th year.
Or if you passed away on the 3rd year, and the proceeds of the life insurance are given immediately to your beneficiaries, and the fund balance given at the end of the 15th year, you wouldn’t complain about paying only two years of premiums.
2. The long term healthcare is there as soon as you have enough funds in your health care fund for it.
It simply means your money stays there for healthcare use until you use it, or after the maturity period, you take it out.
If you decide to take it out, then you are intentionally opting out of long term care.
3. Kaiser will cover up to the fund value, not just P3,500 per year. The P3,500 per year is what Kaiser adds to the fund value.
If you don’t use anything for the year, the fund grows 7 – 10% and then Kaiser adds another P3,500 to it.
And so on. If you need it, you can use up to whatever amount is in your fund.
Well, investing P124k over 5 years isn’t really going to make anybody secure, right?
But years 6 to 15 is not the long term care period. Year 15 is the start of the long term care period, when you have at least P176k+
By year 22, you’ll have P350k, and year 29 you’ll have P700k in your health fund.
Anyway, let me remind you of a 4th point. Kaiser is but part of a strategy. Kaiser is supposed to be a level 1 investment, so that you cover all bases while you are growing your wealth. The growing your wealth part is level 2 investing in mutual funds. That plus Kaiser is supposed to make you secure over time. From year 6 onwards, you’re supposed to continue the payments but put them in mutual funds instead of Kaiser, so we let the Kaiser silently grow as our health fund.
Cheers
Bobet
if i had paid 10k bec you wanted to invest…
and i dont have the money to continue with the rest.
what do i do?
are my 10 k lost or can i get them back ??
HELP!!
For ANY investment, you decided to invest because you are anticipating a better future.
Why would you want to stop?
Getting wealthy and investing are not events. They are processes. They take time.
Hindi ito sprint, na pag napagod mag-gi-give up na and you lose everything.
You might not have money to invest now, but that is only temporary, and not a reason to stop.
Investing, like life, is a marathon. We can slow down, and even rest a little, but we should continue.
In a marathon, those who continue are always winners.
In the case of your Kaiser plan, if you are unable to continue payments now, and stop paying, then as with all protection products, it will lapse. But you can have it reinstated within two years, with option to either pay all back premiums ( with interest ) or have the plan re-dated.
If you have other investments, you can stop investing temporarily, then either increase your cashflow, live below your means, or both. Then plan to resume investing as soon as possible.
One of my financial mentors say the secret to success is ABFx3
— ABF 1: Accept the Brutal Facts ( I don’t have money , so I can’t afford investments now )
— ABF 2: Anticipate a Better Future ( This is only temporary, so I will soon have money )
— ABF 3: Act with Bold Faith ( Now let’s go work hard! God has plans for me! )
You’re in ABF 1 now, so go to ABF 2 and ABF 3 🙂
Good Day,
A question about kaiser. If for uncontrolled circumstances there is a need to withdraw from your kaiser plan within the paying period because you need the money. Is that possible? How about withdrawing the money after the 5 or 7 years of payment has been completed but still within the maturity period?
Will very much appreciate your response.
The plan will initially invest in protection short term protection, but i think beginning on the third year, it will have withdrawable cash value, that gradually grows over time, and reach maximum value on the 20th year. There is also a bonus at the end of the 20th year that enables the fund to grow to twice to almost thrice the total premiums.
It is recommended though, to think of the plan as something you’d use for your own health protection, and not as withdrawable cash. You also have the option to transfer the plan to another person.
1st Just to clarify from what I’ve read in the thread. Is the K35 a 15 year plan only?
2nd after the 15th or the 20th year. If I choose not to withdraw the money or just half of it. Do I still get the health benefit provided by Kaiser or I can only use the cash amount accumulated? Sample. Will the Annual Health Benefit still increase together with the cash value after the 20th year? Do I still get the Group Accidental Death & Disability aside the cash value that I have? Is the Intensive Care Unit, Miscellaneous Fee, Physician Fee, Annual Physical Examination benefits and Dental benefits still available after the 20th year? What are the things that I have to expect and not to expect after the 20th year?
The K35 Premium is an old 15-year plan, and no longer being sold.
All new long term plans today are 20 year plans (Ultimate Kaiser Health Builder), and the lowest is K-45.
For Ultimate Kaiser, you can not “partially withdraw” within the 20 year period, you can only use the plan for healthcare (such use decreases the cash value of the plan) or terminate it for whatever its cash value is ( we strongly recommend against that ). Whatever is in the plan, will accumulate, and earn at a projected 7 – 10% per year.
The plan changes over time.
during the first seven years:
— you have FREE annual physical exam, FREE dental exam, oral prophylaxis and unlimited tooth extraction
— you have fixed maximum hospitalization/in-patient benefit, for most conditions, except pre-existing conditions and dreaded diseases
— you have waiver of premium in case of death
during the 20 year life of the plan
— you are covered by the Group Accidental Death and Disability
During years 8 to 20 ( after the 7 year paying period )
— you are covered for inpatient/outpatient benefits, for almost any condition, including pre-existing conditions and dreaded diseases
— Kaiser pays money into your “health savings account” every year
— your limit is whatever the value of your “health savings account”
— whatever is in your “health savings account” grows at 7 – 10% per year
On the 20th year or later
— you can partially withdraw from your “health savings account”
— you are covered for inpatient/outpatient benefits, for almost any condition, including pre-existing conditions and dreaded diseases
— your limit is whatever the value of your “health savings account”
— whatever is in your “health savings account” grows at 7 – 10% per year
— no more insurance
I bought my son a K-45 plan when he was 20 years old. If he does not use any health benefits, he’ll have P525k when he is 40 years old, and approx P3.5m when he reaches 60 years old. I bought my younger son a K-45 plan when he was 18. He will have P4.2M when he reaches 60 years old.
Kaiser is only an entry level product. It ensures you have a little health protection, and a little life protection and investment (in case you didn’t need health and life protection for 20 years, you have a windfall on the 20th year) while you do not have much in the early years. But the longer you do not use it, the bigger the health benefits.
As you build your wealth, you are expected to complement it with more health protection, more life protection, and more investments.
Thank you for clarifying. If I may ask how do we compute the “health savings account”? Since you said that our limit after the 20th year is whatever the value of our health savings?
Oh, this is a bit complicated because it has lots of variables. Kaiser premiums are partly invested in mutual funds which are safe investments with high compounded annual growth rates.
Now look at your policy. It has a schedule of payments to the “health savings account.”
Then whatever amount is in there, earns 7 – 10% per year. This is a projected buffered rate, which depends on the how the actual investments in mutual funds are doing.
Whatever is in there depends also in part to what you are using.
If you have an “Ultimate” product, there is a second set of payments called “bonus” which is given when the investments perform better than the conservative projections.
The maximum projected value after 20 years was given to you in the illustration shown to you when you got the plan, assuming you did not avail of any health benefit ( other than the free annual physical exam, and annual free dental exam ) during the accumulation period.
If you tell me your actual plan, I could give you the projected value after the 20th year.
I only have the K35. What other offer do kaiser give after the 15th year if any? Will I still get the HMO services that kaiser offers?
I’ll get back later about the K35. It’s an old plan, so I need to ask around for the figures.
After the 15th year, if you keep your funds in Kaiser, you are still eligible for HMO benefits, e.g. discounted rates on hospital and professional fees, and the benefits are subject to whatever amount is in your health savings account/fund, so use it wisely.
Have to run, I am attending the TrulyRichClub Wealth Summit 2016 today!
Thank you for giving time to answer my inquiries. I’ll wait for your response about the K35 plan.
Hi Mike,
I sent you the Kaiser premium table and explanation directly to your email
Keep on saving and investing!
Cheers
Bobet