Personal Wealth

Against the backdrop of a challenging economic climate, the third quarter of 2023 witnessed a surge in retrenchments, leaving individuals grappling with financial uncertainties. Hopefully, the [...]

For most of us, the property we own is likely to be the most significant purchase we will ever make in our lifetime. From both a financial and psychological standpoint, it is also probably the [...]

It is inevitable to avoid crises or market downturns during your long-term investment journey. While we acknowledge that some turbulence is normal in any flight, it doesn’t guarantee our [...]

In the past two decades, we have not used investment-linked policies (ILPs) when constructing investment portfolios for our clients because we do not deem them suitable. However, over the years, [...]

Living a Good Life: Choosing the Right Path Over the Easy Path “A lot of people have thought about happiness and what it means to have a good life, and I would subscribe to this: We only [...]

When I was much younger, I recall my mother’s sudden request for me to accompany her on an evening stroll. It was a puzzling invitation, but I readily obliged. After all, I was eager to mention [...]

Living a Good Life: Taking the ‘Shortcut’ to Filmmaking and Creativity “It’s not about the ability to retire but also how we utilise the time while we are on this planet. In the last [...]

More often than not, many investors assume that once they have completed their wealth plan when they are younger, they do not need to revisit it. However, this is not a reliable approach to [...]

It is Saturday evening, January 28th, and I find myself sitting with a group of close friends in one of their homes. It is still the Lunar New Year season, and we are having a game of Texas [...]

Over the past months, during the various webinars that I did, I have been asked this same question several times: How does Providend ensure that our client advisers always do the right thing for [...]

As wealth advisers, we are always searching for new ways to communicate well-established ideas in a way that helps clients visualise, understand, and internalise important concepts. Metaphors, I [...]

Living a Good Life: Lessons from Travelling 50 Countries on $3,000 “Some of the guesthouses are closed due to the pandemic, so I had to pitch a tent along the road to stay a night.” [...]

Earlier this year, I was on the beautiful islands of the Philippines. The sky was bright blue, while the rolling green hills set the backdrop for my holiday. To fully soak in the island [...]

Previously from other big financial institutions, Joyce and Zhi Han both coincidentally applied for an advisory role at Providend after watching this video where Christopher, our CEO, shares the [...]

At Providend, in order to help our clients achieve enough returns in the most reliable way to enable their life goals and life events, we started using the Ibbotson-Chen Model early this year to [...]

When I first started my career in the financial services sector in the late 90s, comprehensive financial planning was not widely practised. Most of the time, it was really just product sales. I [...]

“When I was much younger, we used to stay at a much bigger place. We had two cars and two maids, then subsequently, we just had one car, no more maid, downsized a little bit and went to rent [...]

2015 was a very somber year for me. A series of events that happened reshaped the way I view my career in the financial services industry. Within a short span of two months, three of my clients, [...]

With the recent COE prices reported to be at an all-time high, the idea of owning a car in Singapore has become even harder to justify. In this episode, our Client Adviser, Ray Zheng, shares the [...]

In this fast-paced financial landscape where businesses are in pursuit of faster revenue, interactions between wealth advisers and clients are highly transactional such that the value is often [...]

In the past 3 years, many studies on the value of advice have emerged. Fund managers like Russell Investments and Vanguard, as well as professional associations like CFA Institute and Financial [...]

“When you say people get free advice here, I laughed because in the end when you think about how this world works, nobody works for free. So you are paying for what you are getting somehow. [...]

Recession, the pandemic and shifting demographics are intensifying the pressures on the ‘sandwich generation’ – those taking care of both their elderly parents and young children. This can put a [...]

About a year ago on 26 October 2022, my day was marked with many realisations, each with varying intensities of pause and self-reflection. The first one came when it dawned on me that I had [...]

The total cost of university education can range from $100,000 to $1 million in SGD today, depending on many factors such as country, university, academic field, degree level, inflation, and [...]

Property prices in Singapore have been rising for the past few years, particularly for landed projects, despite higher mortgage interest rates and government cooling measures. It is no surprise [...]

*Due to unforeseen circumstances, we will be postponing the episode on Investment-linked policies to a later date. Do keep a look out for it in the coming months and meanwhile, we hope you will [...]

Have you ever been to the doctor and not followed their advice? Perhaps they told you to quit smoking, avoid certain foods, or take up a new exercise regimen. Perhaps you tried to follow their [...]

Did you know that back in 2013, a panel set up to review the financial advisory industry has rejected an outright ban on commission for financial advisers in Singapore? In this episode, Chris [...]

20 years ago, I wrote an article in this same column about the different ways financial institutions are compensated and their implications for consumers. Suffice to say, the industry, which is [...]