Dear NTUC Income.

Last year, I wrote about how convenient your service was when it came to renewing my motorcycle insurance.

NOW LOOK AT THE MONSTER YOU HAVE BECOME:

Motorcycle insurance renewal letter: no, I'm not interested in calling my agent or your 24-hour customer service hotline! I just want to click a button and give you my money!

AND ON YOUR WEBSITE:

NTUC Income Online: where is the renew button for me to renew my motorcycle insurance?

What is – I don’t even – which hamster told you that customers are desirous of this heinous pigletry???

I don’t want to “call [my] agent or [your] 24-hour hotline” because I don’t need to talk to a human being to do this.

I just want to click a button and give you my money so that you can insure Le Poots and I – that is all.

Like what you see in this picture here, just in case you’ve forgotten what convenience and customer service is all about:

Customer service and convenience, circa 2010.

At the same time, it seems my premium has increased to $322.58. Why?

If you think this is an uneducated grouse, don’t worry – I know what the basic principles of insurance entail.

Nevertheless, my question centres on a logical Key Performance Indicator that all efficient insurers should adopt (or should have at least adopted), and that is: insurers must aim to maintain or reduce the year-on-year premiums that a customer has to pay.

But why can’t insurers meet that aim in Singapore?

Is it because of:

I have no ready answers.

But if anything, ladies and gentlemen, this is yet another reason why we need honest and customer-oriented people in charge of the organisations and institutions in our country.

Human beings are like currents…

…we follow the path of least resistance.


An e-mail reply from MSIG.


An e-mail reply from AXA.


What is presented to me when I log on to the Income website.

My scooter insurance’s up for renewal; I’m with NTUC Income but I thought I’d scout around to see if I could get a better offer from another company.

Out of all the agencies I e-mailed, only two got back to me, and in no uncertain terms, informed me that they weren’t hard up for my money so I could very kindly f*** off and leave them alone.

Or it could have just been bad customer service.

To MSIG’s credit (or discredit?), the e-mail was copied to two reps, one of whom actually forwarded my message to Commercial Agency Pte Ltd, and an agent quoted me a premium of $350.96 on the same terms that NTUC Income offered.

Except, of course:

  • Income’s premium is lower,
  • it’s giving me a 5% loyalty discount which reduces the premium even more AND
  • I have complete ease of renewal – one click, enter my credit card details and I’m done.

Moral of the story: make it easy for your customers to get what they want, and you’ll keep them, even if it’s just to make $300 off of them for another year.

Appointment Booking System.

I’ve been trying to arrange meetings/consultations sessions with students and it’s not always possible because of our different timetables. I’m now trying to find a free online appointment booking system that integrates with Google Calendars to serve two purposes:

  1. Allow students to ‘book’ a meeting slot with me based on mine and their available meeting times without much hassle.
  2. Automatically ‘pull’ info from my Google Calendar to determine when I’m free/when I’m not free + ‘push’ info to my Google Calendar to automatically update my schedule for me.

I don’t think anyone has come up with something like this yet so if any computing whiz wants to work on this, I’d say go for it (and let me know when you do come up with this so that I can use it! It’s my brainchild after all!). You can most likely sell it to companies/organisations that need this service when you’re done creating the program for it.