Talking Point’s Blog

“So what do I do with my money from now on? Stash it under the mattress?” quipped my mother, after she was told by yours truly not to trust financial institutions completely.

Rrrrright.

Like many structured notes investors here, my mum has lost her confidence in financial institutions, or their staff, to be exact.

About two years ago, my mum went down to a certain financial institution to “re-deposit” her fixed deposit. She does that religiously every year, to ensure that she gets a better interest rate. (If you don’t know this yet, banks will give you a higher interest rate if you call at the banks personally. You withdraw the fixed deposit upon maturity and bank it in again as “fresh funds” to enjoy the better rates. Fixed deposits that are automatically renewed get a lower deposit rate. Don’t ask me why, it’s really a stupid and unnecessary policy.)

So it was during that fateful visit that she was convinced by a sales staff to switch to a product that delivers higher returns.

Yes I know what you’re thinking – serves her right for being so greedy! Now, my mother is your average neighbourhood aunty whose knowledge of bank products is limited to saving and fixed deposits. She did not go to school and has not heard of “cheem” terms like structured notes, credit events, principal guaranteed, underlying securities etc etc etc.

“Aunty don’t worry lah, the product is very safe,” the sales staff assured her. “The returns are 5%, you cannot get that kind of interest on fixed deposits!”

After some reassurance, my mum was sold. She signed on the dotted line based on trust and plonked $10,000 into the notes.

The rest is history.

Technically, my mum hasn’t lost the entire value of her investment. The structured notes she bought were not part of the series that were affected by the fall of Lehman Brothers. But the financial institution which distributed the notes subsequently sent her a letter saying that “credit events have occured in relation to the reference entities under the original underlying assets” (whatever that means!) and that the market value of the notes has nose-dived.

The letter was signed off as “Yours faithfully, Wealth Management, The-Financial-Institition-That-Sold-You-The-Toxic-Stuff. This is a computer-generated letter. No signature is required.”

So much for accountability and personable customer service! Is it that difficult to put a name down so that your customer can call you up and ask you what-the-hell the letter means?

We now have zilch faith in this financial institution, especially after it failed to respond to our request to arrange for a meeting (I had called up the institution to complain that it should not have sold the notes to my mum who didn’t understand what she had bought into).

My mum has been spooked by this incident. And I now insist that she brings me along whenever she needs to go to the bank for any transaction. A few months ago, she closed her account at one bank and moved the funds to another bank. I grilled the poor bank staff whenever he mentioned banking terms that are not in my everyday vocabulary. My mum felt sorry for him but I guess one can never be too careful where money matters are concerned.

On the recent episode of Talking Point, Ai Boon, who’s from The Association of Banks in Singapore, said the structured notes saga has been a “wake-up call” for the industry. I certainly hope it’s also the case for consumers, many of whom have paid the price for ignorance.

It is a painful way for consumers like my mum to learn that they cannot take what the bank staff tell you at face value. We’ve since been reminded umpteem times that this is a “buyer beware” regime, so the next time any financial institution or financial advisory staff try to sell you something, please make sure you know what you’re in for. The fine print is there for a reason. Read it! And if you don’t understand the product, RUN AWAY from it!!!

Or keep your money under the mattress, it’s probably safer!

Hi all

This is the first official blog I’m writing for Talking Point.  What started out as a lunchtime conversation between fellow host, PN Balji and myself, has today become a regular 2 segment discussion show on Channel NewsAsia.

I wanted to share more about the genesis of the show and ponder on where we can take it.

About a year and a half ago, Balji bought me lunch at the Cricket Club, to welcome me back to MediaCorp and journalism.  On that day, he challenged me to come up with a discussion show on local politics/ hot topics.  I told him then that I would do it, but only if he too helped to contribute to the show.  It was a leap of faith for both of us, and we shook hands at that lunch.  Balji has since left MediaCorp but is still with me on the show, even as he pursues his many projects.

We experimented with the format – first a brief, one segment discussion of about 7- 10 minutes, and then now 2 segments at the prime time news slot on Sunday.  Feedback was mixed when we started in July last year, some negative comments about ’domineering female host’; and about the brevity of the show, and how it allowed for little or no depth.

These viewers helped us – first, Balji got more used to TV, (and has started wearing socks) and got used to jumping in earlier, while I (mostly) try to reign myself in and be patient so that I don’t seem to dominate the questioning.  More importantly, the feedback was good enough to allow us to take the show into 2 segments, ie double it’s original length.

I have a great team of producers/editors who take turns to work with me on the show.  Without them, we would not have been able to get the great guests who have made some of our episodes truly memorable.  And it is the guests – and their views – which have truly made a difference.

Our first guest was Nominated MP Siew Kum Hong, and that first episode, where we discussed the Mas Selamat escape, drew some sharp views from the people we spoke about.

The interview with Josie and Maureen of the ‘new Aware EGM’, the brave 16 year old girl who spoke about her experience of going through 2 abortions, the great guests who made our episode on death – Gerard Ee, Dr Mary Ann Tsao, and many others who have been on the programme – all these have helped to illuminate and encourage me to continue with this.

So do the viewers who email us their feedback, and those of you who stop me to chat with me about the show.

Keep at it please, we need to be reminded sometimes, that what we do, really matters, as we believe it does.

When I was told that I was handling the episode on Teen Pregnancy and abortion and was supposed to bring in 2 guests including a teen mom, I was not hopeful about getting any teenage mothers who would be willing to share their experiences on TV. From experience, interviewees usually shy away from topics that may be highly personal in nature.

So it was not surprising that my requests for assistance from several shelters that help teen moms cope with their difficulties were met with a similar response, that is – “It’s going to be difficult to persuade the girls to go on TV”.

In fact, the episode had to be pushed back a week later to give these shelters a bit more time to help persuade one of the girls to come forward and share her story.

Fortunately, a few days before the scheduled recording date, Pastor Andrew Choo from Andrew and Grace Home, a shelter for teens , sent me a text message to say that he found someone who would be willing to speak to me : 16-year-old Sarah, (not her real name, of course) who had abortion twice, both times when she was just 13. I was quite intrigued to listen to her story. But I didn’t get to talk to her on the phone till a few days later.

When I finally managed to speak to her, Sarah was surprisingly chatty, and was willing to offer answers to any questions I asked, even those that were highly personal. There was none of that ‘No comment’ type of response from her. I was pleasantly surprised but I knew that I had to tread very carefully when asking questions about her experiences, in case I made one wrong move that might cause her to pull out.

It was fortunate for me that throughout the conversation, Sarah remained open and even candid at times, hardly displaying any hint of apprehension or uneasiness when answering questions that I thought were ‘cringe-worthy’. I noticed that some people tend to get nervous or be on their guard when speaking to journalists (ok, we really don’t bite), but not Sarah. She was perfectly open and, most importantly, honest about her past, especially when I had asked her for the details – like how she got pregnant, why she decided to abort twice, how her family had reacted to news of her pregnancy and her subsequent decision to get an abortion, etc.

And happily for me, at the end of our conversation, Sarah was STILL willing to come and be a guest on the programme.

Of course I promised her that we’d do our part to protect her identity, so that her face and voice are not recognizable.

The thing about studio guests is you’d never know if they’d cancel on you at the last minute. This had happened several times before, causing me to have to scramble madly to get the next available interviewee. So I was praying hard till the day of the recording that Sarah would not pull a disappearing act on me.

And thank heavens she didn’t!

There she was at the MediaCorp Reception, lounging comfortably in her halter neck, shorts and slippers, with a pink cardigan slung over her shoulder, sipping a drink she had bought from one of the fast food restaurants.

My initial response was one of surprise, actually.

Sarah may be 16 years old, but she looked more like a 12-year-old to me. She was petite, slightly chubby and really very young! I was sure that if I were to put her in a school uniform, she’d look like any one of my daughter’s classmates!

But Sarah had an air of being ‘street-smart’ about her. We chatted a bit more as we waited for the other guest – Noel Tan , the Programme Director of the Sanctuary House, a shelter for babies of unwed mothers.

Through our little chit-chat, I found out that Sarah’s first pregnancy was the result of non-consensual sex, forced upon her by “a friend of a friend” who was in his 30s then! I couldn’t help but feel angry and disgusted at the same time. What a scoundrel!, I thought. If Sarah looked to me like a 12-year-old now (when she’s actually 16) she must’ve looked much younger then! Any sane person would’ve been able to see that she was much too young to be involved in any kind of sexual act. To cut the story short, Sarah decided to have an abortion.

“Well, what about the second time you got pregnant?” I asked her.

“It was my boyfriend”, she said.

“How old was he?” I asked again.

“23”, she said simply.

“Did he know you were 13??!” I blurted out.

“Yes,” she deadpanned. Having been a journalist for some time now, I’m hardly surprised by the kinds of things that people do but I found this information rather unnerving. More than anything else, I was shocked that at 13, Sarah was already exposed to a world that she may not have been ready for.

My thoughts instinctively turned to my 11-year old daughter, and the concerns girls her age have. I would think that at 13, any (female) teenager today would be worried about whether she’s going to pass her next school test or be anxious about whether the next Twilight movie is going to be awesome – and not worry about why she had missed her period, and get anxious over the possibility of being pregnant!

I guess times have really changed since the days when I was a giggly 13-year-old, who blushed easily when looking at pictures of seemingly ‘half-naked men’ in wholesome teen magazines like Tiger Beat (which was popular with the girls in the 80s).

But has time really changed things that much? Even if teenagers today can have access to various kinds of information on the internet (including the ‘adult-friendly’ ones), there are still certain important norms and desirable values that we’d like to preserve in our society, aren’t there? I mean, all of us feel the need to educate our young about the do’s and the don’ts or the right’s and the wrong’s, etc. as part of growing up in a positive and constructive environment.

But, really, whose responsibility is it to educate our teenagers? Do we put the responsibility solely on the shoulders of parents? Or do we leave it entirely to schools to equip our young children with a basic understanding of sexuality education so that they would know the best course of action to pursue in certain ‘tricky’ situations?.

Personally, I whole-heartedly believe that the bulk of the responsibility should lie with the parents. After all, first impressions are formed at home, and good habits start at home, too.

I sometimes wonder, why does it seem that our children speak and act like us? It may be because we are the first people they watch and may subsequently emulate. But what if the situation at home is less than ideal? There’s certainly cause for worry when the home environment is not able to provide the kind of guidance that may allow the child to develop a healthy perspective on life.

For me, I constantly hope that I have provided my daughter with enough guidance and influence that may allow her to choose the right path as she gets older.

But what of teenagers like Sarah? Sarah was perhaps one of those unfortunate children who came from broken homes and who had not had the opportunity to grow up in a positive home environment. It may be counter-productive and even ill-advised to pre-judge teenagers like her based on their pasts, growing up in less than favourable circumstances. But in Sarah’s case, what’s most important right now is that she genuinely wants to improve her life.

Although she had dropped out of school, Sarah is taking up a life-saving course while residing at the Andrew and Grace Home. She had said that next year she’d like to continue her studies and apply for her N-levels cert. And after that, she’d want to go on to a higher certification as she’s realized that it’s the only way to get a good job.

It looks like Sarah has got her sights set on the right targets. From the impression I gathered in my conversations with her, Sarah seems to be a worldly-wise person who is mature for her age and with a gung-ho attitude to boot!

With these qualities, I’m sure she’ll be able to make it in life, so long as she stays on the right path.

I wish her all the best.