Are FInancial Advisors playing their own Squid Game in Singapore ?

 

A few days ago, Ivann Fok of Pyinvesting.com beeped me on Messenger and told me that I should watch the Squid Game, he thinks there's at least one blog article that I can write based on this show. 

Turns out he is right. 

If you have not watched the Squid Game on Netflix, do it ASAP. If you can't afford Netflix, maybe skip the next 2-3 years of drinking bubble tea to build a self-sustaining Netflix subscription with local stock dividends.   

The Squid Game will mean different things to different people but primarily people will resonate with it's very gloomy critique of capitalism. 

I'm going to do my own spin on the Squid game and you are free to decide where it is a commentary about financial advisors in Singapore. 

This article assumes that you have watched the entire series.

To me, Squid Game answers the question as to what happens to folks who are (1) unlucky or (2) lack intelligence and conscientiousness. Every society has such folks - folks who may not be able to survive the academic grind or, somehow, met the wrong people at the wrong time. The result of this is a precariat - folks with zero financial, social or cultural capital.

In Singapore, a sales role exists to allow the precariat to turn their lives around. This is usually in real estate sales, entrepreneurs or in insurance sales where non-degree holders can end up living in a GCB. 

For now, I'm going to zoom in on insurance sales for this article because, well, a lot of my haters are in this industry. A similar argument can be made for all sales and entrepreneur lifestyles. 

Insurance is a second chance industry with, in my opinion, fairly lax academic pre-requisites. The minimum requirement is an 'A' level certification, polytechnic diploma or an IB cert. For a wider perspective, note that about 56% of 25-29-year-old Singaporeans have a degree today. You don't even need to meet the median academic proficiency level to sign up to be a financial advisor Singapore.

So with this example in mind, let's compare the experiences of an FA with various courses of the Squid Game.

a) Slapping game

The first encounter with a recruiter results in a slapping game. I think that is one of the key skills of being a successful FA or any salesman. Can you deal with rejection? I find it really accurate that you need to get slapped a few times before you get a cash payout. Imagine calling countless pals to meet up for lunch but getting asked whether you are FA and then getting rejected by someone whom you knew for decades. 

But most of the folk who carry on are those who can swallow these few rounds of rejection so they can move on to the next round of the game.

b) The Squid Games

The Squid Games have six-rounds, all of which has brutal consequences. I will quickly run through each round and which areas, in my opinion, are similar to financial sales work.

• The first game is Red Light, Green Light. 

To me, this is a game of compliance with local laws. Non-compliance is fatal. When you take on client's money, there are established steps that are not negotiable. Especially if funds come from overseas. 

• The second game is using a needle to remove a pattern from a honey-combed sweet. 

This is a test of speed and precision. Conscientious folks are better at this and every shape is a triangle for them. Those who are not born to be precise will see every shape like an umbrella. This could mean keeping up meetings with prospective clients and making the right recommendations for them. The complexity of products that are being sold can be high.  

• The third game is tug of war. 

This is a pure test of strength. Insurance and investment products often have to deal with substitutes. Previously, for FAs it was a fight to the death against Buy Term and Invest the Rest. Now Financial Advisors right now seem very concerned about Robo-advisors. Almost every day, a salesperson needs to deal with objections, very often from products that levy a fraction of the expense. 

• The fourth game is a game whereby you find ways to divide marbles between yourselves

This is a test of conscience and the most heart-wrenching test I my view. I teared when Ali died after being tricked by Sang Woo. 

I will illustrate this with only one data point as I think a story is better. A very competent and ethical FA once told me that he sold a long-dated lock-in product to uniformed personnel who seemed to have an iron rice-bowl job. A few years later, he was dishonourably discharged and had to surrender his policy. The guilt from making the sale made him switch to primarily AUM career. 

There will always be a conflict of interest in the FA industry. Commissions are fixed but outcomes are not. Someone will always lose their marbles when a transaction is being made.

• The fifth game of crossing the glass bridge with random panels made to collapse. 

This is simply about luck and timing. Maybe you started in a pandemic and got a few friends to buy a policy but you get MDRT because the threshold was lower in 2020. Others entered at a bad time and had to quit. 

• The final game is a Squid Game which is just a game of tag played by two guys. 

At the end of the day, the FA industry, like real estate sales, is a Tournament. The large number of folks at the bottom can barely eke an existence but there is very little room at the top. This is why only one person can win the Squid games.

c) Old man and VIPS

 If you are good enough to be a VIP, then it means that you've joined the directors of these FA companies that essentially get to bet on rookie agents like horses. Get the right kind of agent and you can profit from the sales commissions. VIPs are portrayed very negatively in the series.

But the real winner is the Old Man or player 001. He's free enough to play the game and yet exit in safety no matter what the outcome is. To me, any one of us can be the Old Man if we own shares in Insurance companies. As of now, I'm still holding onto my China Pacific Insurance and Suncorp shares.

The overarching question

Finally, I think Squid Game as a series does pose the question for policymakers. 

To reduce the financial burden of the middle class, it is very easy for a policymaker to press a button and ban commissioned sales and enforce fees for financial advice, and raise academic standards at the same time. 

This will mean the end of the Squid Game.

But why do people continue playing the Squid Game even when the police have all the evidence that such a game exists?

The show answered that question and the answer should scare you. 

For the folks who are drawn into the Squid Game, the game is a rare moment of personal agency and fair play that has been denied to them by society at large.   

As such, I leave you with no answers as to what the policy intervention from MAS should look like.