Many contracts to chose from

APRIL designed a range of 9 contracts covering accident or illness for expatriates. These contracts range from a simple, straight forward, international medical cover, to more comprehensive cover including out-patient, dental and optical. They also have contracts working on a monthly revolving basis to cover those on short missions, student exchange programmes or training, and an integrated Mutuelle which work as a  one-stop-center for French who want to remain in the French Social Security System (CFE) – If you are French and want to know more, read this article in french.

Great Medical Cover

Their hospitalisation cover from their Magellan contract is the best Medical Cover I’ve seen. You are covered for 100% of actual costs, up to a maximum amount of healthcare expenses which range from 200,000 to 500,000 Euros – these doubles in the event of accident or critical illness.

I do like the fact that these cover includes pregnancy delivery, even for their most basic plan. Sweet.

Best of all, their prices also are sweet. You would pay from 336 Euro if you are a 21 years old on a 200K cover, up to 2,832 Euros if you are over 70 years old on a 500K cover.  Pretty cheap by international standards.

Cover for life

Many insurer do tell you that they will keep covering you in your old days. But it is very hard to find it in writing. April does write it down. The following lines can be found on page two of most of their contract:

APRIL Mobilité offers lifetime healthcare cover if you take out a policy before age 71. You are then covered for as long as you wish with no increase in premium regardless of the level of your expenses.

I love it. To the point that I am introducing their insurances to all my clients who are in their 50s, advising them to switch to APRIL. To me, this is the perfect option for those who want to retire internationally, with programmes such as the Malaysia My Second Home Program.  An international insurance, replicating the French Social System, with a lifetime cover.

As you can see, I like this insurer very much. The more I work with them, the more I like what I see. If you feel like you’d like to know more, I invite you to visit their website (APRIL Mobilité). Unfortunately it is in French, but they do have most of their brochures and information in English. You can also contact me directly and I’ll be happy to provide them to you.

I’ll wrap this post up with a few figures on APRIL Mobilité and the APRIL Group.

APRIL Mobilité in figures

• More than 35,000 persons are currently covered by APRIL Mobilité
• More than 1,000 companies use their service for their expatriates
• More than 3,000 students covered per year

APRIL Group in figures

• 2.5 Million person insured
• 3,200 employees world-wide
• More than 30 years in business
• ISO 9001 2000 certification awarded in 2002

Of course, some of the posts are about personal finance, financial advisers, and how to get juices out of the current market conditions… I joined the which strategy for fund investment discussion and gave my take on the Adviser / Investment situation (one of my posting is here-under). Dare to join the discussion?

Markets have a tendency to not go as per exponential graph. Historically they go in cycles of 20 years. 20 years of bear markets, 20 years of bull markets. We are currently mid-way through a bearish one – since 2000 actually. Hence your bad experiences with Lump Sum. The idea in such a market is not to invest lump sum in markets, but to build positions by cost-averaging over the next few years to rip the rewards when the bulls start seeing red. It may take 5 to 10 years before that… which is not ideal for people considering retirement or already enjoying their mojito on the beach.

The best, as always, is to not have all your eggs in the same basket, and plan your investment with different terms strategically. FD and others “sure” things should get a faire share to ensure cash flow over the next few years (now to 3/4 years), but market investment still is a good approach for LT. And by LT I mean really long term. Not trying to plan for 5 years only, but more likely 10 or more. And should the markets be good in 5, crystallize the profits and diversify, if not, keep going until you have the possibility to do so.

And this is I believe a decent financial planner should not show exponential graphs. They end up deceiving their clients, making things worse.

As a side note, I also think that we find a lot of horror stories online because people tend to react a lot more to losing money than making it. Hence the bad ratio of horror/good stories we find online. My humble take