After announcement by Malaysia Prime Minister, few Insurers and Takaful operators rolled out with guideline for Insurance Policy and Takaful Certificate holders to make application to defer their Premium / Contribution for 3 months. Different from Loan Repayment Moratorium, you need to make application to Insurers for this premium deferment. It is subjected to Insurers’approval.
Detailed Guidelines
At the time of publish, we have gathered information from 6 companies, i.e AIA, Allianz, Etiqa, Hong Leong Assurance, Manulife and Prudential. We will try to update the guideline from time to time. You can download the guideline from here.
* 30 Mar 2020 – New updated Guideline to include Great Eastern can be downloaded from here. (https://ethanteh.com/covid-19-insurer-premium-deferment-v2/)
Should I take the Deferment?
Actually we are still unclear with the arrangement after the deferment period. As most insurers also stated the actual arrangement shall be announced later. The simple announcement still provide room for uncertainties:
- Most of the Insurers / Takaful Operators mention that “this is not a waiver of premium” and “Once the deferment period ends, your contractual provisions regarding premium/contribution payment will resume.”
- In the case of Investment Linked policies, will the Insurers continue to charge the Cost of Insurance? If yes, the Account Value will be affected and subsequently affecting the sustainability of the Policy.
- In the event of Traditional Insurance Plan that being paid annually, this deferment is likely to allow you to pay the premium later. E.g. You premium due in 15 April 2020, upon approval, you can pay your premium in 15 July 2020. Hence, we would expect the monthly and quarterly paying policy to do the same.
We share this for everyone’s convenience. But we are still waiting for clearer explanation before we could provide our view on this matter.
Update 30 Mar 2020 – Pay Back Deferred Premium
One of the Insurer provided the following:
“Policyholder has to pay back the deferred premium(s) and the next due premium once the Program has ended to avoid lapsation of policy. Please be reminded that this is not a waiver of premium program.”
While waiting for other insurers to respond, we take this as the same practice among all the insurers. Despite not knowing the mechanism of paying back, it is important to note that policy holder need to pay back the deferred premium(s).
Please refer to your Financial Adviser or Insurance Agent for detailed discussion.