Must see for EK pilots - Income protection issue
 

If you had doubts about the Topcover income protection plan, then take a look at this thread on Fragrant Habour.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=276853

After that contact EPC LIPS for your insurance needs.

This might be the most important posting on pprune for EK pilots. I can remember when LIPS was about to become an option for EK pilots and suddenly I started getting lots of information from TOPCOVER regarding how wonderful and how well underwritten they were. It made me quite suspicious as well when someone (and I forget who he was) fired off a letter to all of us in an attempt to make us wary of LIPS.

The larger the insurance company, the more underwritten it is and the more lawyers it has, the less likely you will ever see any compensation if you are entitled to it.

About a year ago a member of my family passed on and to this day the insurance company has not paid one cent in spite of them receiving premiums for over 40 years from the deceased. It is the same pattern described about TOPCOVER in the post on the other forum. Delay, ignore and in the end it comes down to getting a lawyer, thereby reducing the payout benefit.

Its none of my business what other pilots at EK do, but I truly believe that LIPS is a good option and TOPCOVER is a total waste of money.

What was that John Grisham book called?

No more Top Cover for me.

EPC´ much better

Cheers

Please do your homework......
 

The insurance market is littered with failed self-funded income protection schemes, why would the EK one be any different?

You are all clever chaps, open excel and do the sums yourself:

Worldwide average age of claimants = 49 years old. Under LIPS that's an 11 year payout at Dhs 25,000 per month.

For each claimant that is Dhs 300K per year, or a 'liability' for the scheme of Dhs 3.3m.

Premium Dhs 320 per pilot per month.

Average number of annual claims worldwide is 3 pilots in every 1000.

If you have 1000 pilots in the scheme the fund receives Dhs 3,840,000 per year in premium and pays out Dhs 900,000 per year in claims. The same for year two except that the claims are now Dhs 1.8m (it’s cumulative don't you know) and by year 4 the fund is paying out almost as much as it receives. Every year thereafter is the slippery slope into the abyss.

One thing for sure is that when you buy insurance you want the certainty that what you have bought can meet its financial commitments. With the LIPS scheme you don’t have that, if there is money in the pot, you’ll get paid, if not you won’t. Why anyone would place the future protection of themselves and their family into an unregulated and financially unsecured scheme is beyond my ken.

A couple of other things to consider; claims and benefits are submitted to and managed by the EPC committee, if that isn’t open to abuse I don’t know what is.

What deductions are made from the fund by the committee, administrators, trustees, managers? Do we know who is drawing what salaries and how much?

Are audited financial statements for the fund available?

The EPC/LIPS committee are selling an insurance product and managing an investment fund, activities for which they are neither licensed by the Ministry of Economy nor the Central Bank. According to the law of the UAE, they are operating illegally.

Topcover may not be perfect but it is a 1000 times better bet than LIPS. AIU will be around a lot, lot longer paying out claims than the LIPS fund will be.

I think the point is that TopCover are proven frauds, LIPS has yet to be held to account.

by the way, every insurance fund works the same. To be viable they must receive more in premiums than they pay out in claims. So it may mean that LIPS will have to adjust premiums when a claim trend establishes. It doesn't mean it is not viable.

The bit about not being licenced or trained to handle vast sums of money i totally agree with and is a major concern. Open to abuse for sure.

V

Dear I.P.,
I have also been paying into LIPS for some time and have been concerned about accountability etc. I also have concerns about when LIPS will be audited. Also for your interest you will find on the EPC homepage that it states that LIPS will be administered only by the EPC President, Treasurer and the Fund Administrator. Why don't you just write to the director and put your concerns to him, as i will be doing? All of this conjecture and misrepresentation is not conducive to seeking the truth, or is it that you work for the opposition?

At worst Topcover are frauds, and their track record is dreadful. Perhaps IP would like to comment on the way some cases have been handled??? And don't bother just saying that you can't comment on xyz case.

Lips is a new kid on the block, i support it, and yes there is questions, but lets agree with this scheme ya get something back at the end anyhow!!

SyB :zzz:

I see in the latest newletter that the EPC are now distancing themselves from LIPS.

QUOTE 'We would like to advise all LIPS members that the EPC has nothing to do with the LIPS Scheme aside from publishing it on the EPC website. All enquiries should be directed to ....'

Interesting that one of the Directors is also the EPC Chairman.

EPC can distance themselves all they like, but as long as MP is on both comittees and it is advertised through EPC, a significant conflict of interest exists and will be a problem should EPC's independence ever need to be tested in court. And remember as paid up members of a club, it is likely that all members will also be liable if there is a major financial problem.

V

Come on Vorsicht that is a long bow to draw, members of EPC don't have a finacial liability with LIPS, where do you get that from. LIPS is a trust structure, the liability rests with the trust. I agree with you about the handling of large sums of money but suggest anyone who has a concern contact the administrators. Insurance companies have one aim...never make a pay out, they employ many lawyers to find ways to avoid it and AIU are no different.

Top Cover may not be perfect but at least it has a history. The EPC LIPS scheme (or is it MP's LIPS scheme) is untested. I didn't leave Top Cover to join the EPC LIPS as Top Cover is legally sold and managed by professionals while LIPS ... ?????

I know that volunteers run the EPC committee and we owe them a debt of gratitude for the thankless job they do. However, I fear that they have been hoodwinked into promoting LIPS without sufficient research or Due Diligence.

Take care that this doesn't bite us all on the proverbial ass.

A bit of a concern to us at Gulf Air also then, since we also use Top Cover. :eek:

What is the legal status of the EPC? Since my club membership is deducted from my salary, Is the club part of EK?

Flying Spag Monster
 

Yes it is a long bow to draw, but remember this is a country where a flight attendant was jailed because her husband was found dead in the bath. She found him there after returning from a layover. The fact that she was verifiably not in the country at time of death was not considered.

She was released at a later date.

Remember also that businessmen, who had committed no crime whatsoever, have been held because someone they were associated with committed a crime.

All i am saying is that there is more than a casual link between the EPC and LIPS. Who knows how a Dubai court would view it.

V

Top Cover .. there is only one and ...
 

You have all been had ... eheh:}

EPC distances itself from LIPS
 

Interesting, especially as the LIPS sites states:

3.1 The Scheme shall be administered by the Committee which shall be appointed by EPCL and, unless determined otherwise by EPCL, shall be made up of the EPC President, Treasurer and the Scheme Administrator. The Committee which shall act for and on behalf of EPCL shall be entitled to reasonable remuneration for its services, such remuneration and any expenses reasonably incurred shall be recoverable from the assets of the Scheme.

EPC distances itself from LIPS
 

I see on the EPC website they state -

"The EPC and the Committee of the EPC has NOTHING - Repeat NOTHING - to do with LIPS. "

So why is the EPC President also on the scheme administration committee? and more importantly why is he also a director of EPCL and receiving a share of the 12 000dhs monthly expenses?

Is it true that EPCL is an abbreviation for a offshore company 'EMIRATES PILOTS CLUB LIMITED' registered in the British Virgin Islands?

So the EPC has NOTHING to do with LIPS do they. Don't be so naive lads.

Well if in fact EPC does have something to do with LIPS, then good. If they manage LIPS as well as they do the EPC, then I am even more confident that LIPS is for me.

I will admit that I got out of TOPCOVER based on my viewpoint of that scheme and then along came LIPS. Having a close relative who is intimately involved in the insurance business, I asked for his advice regarding these matters and to my surprise, he advised me to select LIPS. He subtley admitted that many large insurance companies spend most of their resources recruiting new policy holders, advertising and in litigation. Sadly a good portion of the legal matters deal directly with verifying and often times declining or at least minimizing pay outs.

It is just the nature of the business.

So now I have experienced 2 strikes against large insurance companies. One being the devious technique of ignoring a family members claim after the death of their spouse (hoping that someone of the age of 80 might not be aware enough to persistently follow through with matters during a traumatic time in their life) and also an insiders true viewpoint of the very business for which he is involved.

This is not to say that LIPS will be any different, but I'm inclined to believe that there is far more chances of it.
Once again I will reiterate that this is just my personal experiences with large insurance companies and I am not in any way criticizing someone for selecting TOPCOVER.

LIPS
 

I have been contributing to LIPS for a little while now. And something concerns me.

The scheme has been up and running for well over a year now and the company announces a balance of ONLY one million Dirhams in all that time??

Just basic maths here based on 400 pilots for only one year! 320 by 400 per month by 12 equals 1536000 aed per year so whats happened? unless that was a typo on the EPC website.

Has the investment choice for the funds gone AURY?? last time i checked most markets on a major bull run!! so half a million down in the pot?? What gives?:confused:

Duh. 400 members didn't join on day one. the membership has built up gradually over the year. If you looked at average membership over the first year, it looks about right. Thanks to the LIPS team.

I spoke to a lawyer friend this week and in his view 'something smells fishy' about how LIPS was sold and promoted to the membership by committee members with a financial interest in the scheme. He says this a potentially a conflict of interest and could land the committee in hot water if an individual decided to sue over a failed claim.

He also has concern with the lack of transparency of management of the scheme and legal status of the club.

Three posts and a very strong opinion on LIPS?

What's in it for you Mr 380?

Perhaps you bat for the other team?

The more that people like you bag LIPS, the more determined I am to see it work. I know it has limitations but I have no faith in Top Cover. Why? They only introduced monthly payments when faced with competition, they provided a "big fat zero" on customer support. The only mail I ever saw was to collect a premium. Not to forget the small matter of term benefit introduction, it was to age 60 now reduced to 5 years. Top Cover, stick it where it hurts, I'll do without thank you.

I find it hard to comment on whether one scheme is better than the other (I am a member of one and it just seems easier not to switch).

What I found surprising in the discussion though is that nobody seems to think of the possibility of a member trying to con the scheme by claiming to be sick (or at least a lot more sick than he/she really is as the payout is more attractive than to keep working??). In that case I would want my scheme administrators to be as difficult as possible.

Is it really always the 'big bad company screwing the individual'. I don't really like to think of any of my colleagues ever claiming insurance money in bad faith, but I don't want to be naive either.

atiuta of course I'm batting for the other team. What's in it for me you ask - Zip, I have no financial interest in TopCover or AIG. I am just a happy policy holder.

Con men love people like you. I have a bunch of emails from Nigeria I could forward to you. ;)

You received my IPO then?:D

EK - Income Protection
 

I'm curious:

the front page of myepc.org states that


and yet on the LIPS page it states:

3.1 The Scheme shall be administered by the LIPS Management Team which shall be appointed by EPCL and, unless determined otherwise by EPCL, shall be made up of the EPC President, Treasurer and the Scheme Administrator. The LIPS Management Team which shall act for and on behalf of EPCL shall be entitled to reasonable remuneration for its services, such remuneration and any expenses reasonably incurred shall be recoverable from the assets of the Scheme.

so which is it?


LIPS/EPC are either acting as insurance brokers selling an insurance product or they are acting as finance brokers selling an investment related product, activities for which they are not licensed by the UAE Ministry of Economy nor the Central Bank.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

I_P, you are a sh#t stirer, I am not agreeing or disagreeing with you but your post has only one aim and that is to undermine a product that you don't agree with but which apparently 400 people do. It is probabley no coincidence that it is policy renewal time for TopCover and you decide to join Pprune and start posting against the LIPS scheme. You sound well enough informed on the topic, if you want to know the answer to your question, the one you keep asking, then go and ask the people you are so eager to criticise. ie the EPC or LIPS administrators. If your favoured product is so good it will stand on its merits, some 400 of your colleagues have chosen another product, presumabley after waying up the pros and cons, they don't need you damaging their attempts to establish an alternative. It borders on commercial espionage.

F-S-M, I have raised a valid question and it hasn't been answered. And yes I have raised it with EPC.

Maybe I am sh*t stirring, but if you can explain to me how that would be any different to what atiuta, mensaboy, vorsicht, sheikh-yr-bootie and particularly blueside are doing then I would be really fascinated to hear it.

In fact, whilst you are at it, perhaps you could also explain how my actions that you perceive to "criticise, damage the reputation and to undermine a product" differs from what all the other negative comments about Topcover are trying to do on this thread.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

I agree with you that it is probably no coincidence that it is coming up for the Topcover renewal and blueside starts this thread and ends with "After that contact EPC LIPS for your insurance needs".

I joined this forum to bring another side of the argument and to hopefully point out that whilst Topcover might not be perfect, neither is LIPS and we all need to make informed decisions and not ones based on anonymous postings of some disgruntled CX pilot in HK.

I_P

Lips is a great idea but the fact that it is managed by the EPC and or pilots should be enough of a warning for every one. No regulations, no training, no guarantees, no bloody way!

I_P, fair enough, I just felt there was a difference between critising a product following an actual complaint and scare mongering. Perhaps the promised LIPS report (next month?) might answer these Qs??.

Let's hope it does. This is obviously a fairly emotive issue, understandably, as our futures are at stake here. Noone wants to think they will lose their licence and their career, but on the off chance it does happen, we take out insurance. The insurance is our back stop, and we don't want to believe our back stop is flawed. After all it is our last chance.

I have to admit that my preference is for a fully regulated insurance scheme. I am sure Top Cover is not perfect, but given the circumstances of our employment, they give me greater assurance. It is true the coverage has decreased to 5 years from what it was previously until age 55. That was a major blow. I have approached other major insurance companies for a comparable scheme and have been laughed off.

But that is what makes me uneasy about LIPS. I am very certainly no financial guru. What happens to LIPS when the first guy starts claiming? Probably not a lot. But given the exponential growth of the airline and the number of guys we are hiring, can we be sure that any abuse of the system can be properly tackled. Theoretically, we could be in a position of having to fund guys for 20 years or more, and as the numbers increase, will LIPS be able to track these guys for fraudulent claims effectively? Expecting this from two appointed people is a bit much.

With another thousand pilots to come, plus or minus, how are they going to feel about financing the after EK careers of former (tired and pi$$ed off) pilots? How is this to be regulated? Who begins to decide whether my long lasting hearing loss is more important than Joe Blogg's finger amputation or John Does' severe fatigue?

Is it true that EK have pulled the plug on the EPC LIPS salary deductions from next month? Has someone in EK legal finally woken up to the fact that this scheme has been illegally promoted and sold?

Hey Megacamel, could you please confirm why LIPS has ben illegaly sold and promoted?

Yes please do elaborate! People want to know if this is BS or otherwise.

EGGW

Lips & Aig
 

Excuse my ignorance, I was wondering what would happen theoretically if you buy both AIG and LIPS and be in position to claim benefits?

EGGW and Murrenfan

Because UAE Federal Law No.9 of 1984 says so.

Mr.AB is not a licensed broker and the UAE Ministry of Economy strictly regulates the Insurance industry. Imagine the fraud in this country if they didn't.....

380

I think you'll find that it is the EPC that is pulling the plug on salary deductions and not EK. I'm told a recent consultation with a lawyer has the committee very concerned about their own personal liability in this potential fiasco.

And what ever happened with the promised LIPS report?

It seems all that has been said is true but if AB isn't a licenced insurance broker, neither is NF.

Fellow EK pilots

There's nothing on the EPC site to indicate that monthly payments via EK payroll deduction will no longer continue.

As to the statements posted regarding the overlap betwixt EPC principals and the LIPS principals... if this is true it is disgraceful and should be the subject of prosecution for fraud. This is a very serious allegation and a very serious sitiuation. There will be consequences...

I submit that statements on this thread should be limited to fact, not opinion. I know it's a rumour site, but libel and slander laws are sometimes applied in the UAE. Be very careful. If it turns out that there have been transgressions, I'll be first in line at the lawyers' office and I hope there's a bunch 'a ya there with me... until we have something concrete, let's speak cautiously, lest we find ourselves in hot water...

keep on bloggin' in the free world!
k-o-t-s