By COMMENT
By RAYMOND ROY TIRUCHELVAM | Jun 12, 2010

Mortgage or loan term insurance

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IN times of old, when we buy a property, it was meant for stay, as the term owner-occupied. Slowly, this was extended, when people bought properties for investment purposes. Realising this venture as a business, financial institutions, which usually finance these investments, started assessing the risks associated with it. Hence the birth of the loan or mortgage related insurance coverage.

Today, in Malaysian there are two main types of housing loan related insurance coverage, called MRTA (mortgage reducing term assurance) and MLTA (mortgage level term assurance). The former was the first to be offered, but both protect the loan borrower against death or total permanent disability (TPD). Basically, in the event of loss of life or TPD (or in some instances also covering critical illness, depending on the terms) the policy will cover the remaining payment obligation due under the housing loan to the bank.

The main differentiation factor lies in the offerings and coverage categories, whereby MRTA acts like a life insurance, the premium is lost in the end, but for MLTA it acts as a term policy, whereby there is cash-back in the event of no claim. Furthermore, the MRTA is a reducing balance coverage, that pays back in accordance with a reducing balance schedule, and at the end of the tenor the payable sum is zero. This is not the same for MLTA whereby the coverage is fixed from start, meaning the person gets cash-back mounting to the sum insured.

While it is easy to see, which options stands out the better, we need to further analyse two more factors. Firstly, it involves the fact that the premium for the MLTA is much higher. This can go to 10 times higher in totality compared to a MRTA premium. Which brings us to the second factor, which is the purpose. The purpose of the home mortgage insurance, if we can remember, is to cover us against TPD and death, whereby our family is not burdened with the financing. If we seek to find a reasonable cost approach and in the MRTA instance, to be financed by the bank via lump sum payment capitalised into the loan, then the choice is obvious.

Let us take an example in order to show the details. Thirty-year old Vaniza Carlos is buying a RM125,000 property, and is taking up a 30-year term 80% loan financing package. She is faced with the option of choosing a loan insurance package, and her friendly insurance agent Cryced sets out the terms as per Table 1.

Which will be your pick?

Just for analysis purposes, in order to equate the total cost of the MLTA to current value (to bring it to MRTA equivalent), using the NPV approach at 10% discount rate (method of derivation which was featured in my previous article), the NPV value works out to about RM9,950, which is effectively only about 3 times higher than the cost for MLTA. Year 2020 is 10 years into the loan agreement, where the outstanding loan sum would have reduced to about 75% of original sum.

Nevertheless, under the bancassurance umbrella, there are many types of term life policies which are not directly linked to the property but offers similar risk coverage. Bancassurance is defined as insurance business being provided by banks of financial institutions. This term was coined after banks started merging with insurance companies, and in combination started offering products with dual, loan and risk coverage facilities, among others. But do be careful, as MRTA and MLTA usually covers main critical illnesses (albeit limited from the full list of known 36 critical illnesses), whereas term life policies differs.

It is interesting to note that banks are now insuring this “business venture” or property investment, and if this can be extended to say a business of setting up a restaurant with an initial cost of RM100,000, with the same terms being applied. Food for thought, isn’t it?

Raymond Roy Tiruchelvam … “I forget what I was taught, I only remember what I learnt” is a business planner with SABIC group of companies