Fund Investment

I would suggest to join bank's monthly contribution plan. You may also consider to join the fund house's monthly contribution plan, such as JF. Although you will be charged 1% - 5.5% subscription fee, the charge is one time & based on your invested amount. For fund house, it would even lower the subscription after certain years. It's more flexible as there's no plan duration and you can stop savings at any time. You may also increase/decrease your payment. All payments would be made thru autopay or even thru your VISA card (Wing Hang, Hang Seng) such that you can earn some rebate amount to further lower the subscription fee. I do my monthly investment thru Wing Hang with 0.8% cash rebate every month.
If you invest thru the saving plan provided by any Insurance company (as those you mentioned), you will not pay any subscription fee but you would need to pay the annual management fee which is based on your account balance. My experience indicated the annual management fee is much more than the subscription fee. ]
I had invested same fund thru the bank & AIA Capital Saver. Unbelivably, the annual management fund eats up 30% of the return of the fundvdue to such annual management fee. In 2007, one of my fund with return 12% if invest directly shows -ve return after paying the expensive annual management fee. I really regret to join the saving plan but if I drop now, I have to lost all my money invested (HKD100K+) as I need to pay coming 15 years annual management fee.
The sales might tell you that you have more flexibility to change fund investment but the fact is why you have to change so frequently why fund investment should not be short-term investment? The sales would like you to buy a saving plan because the plan duration would restricted you to pay whole management fee for the whole period, which means they earn much more than you just buy the fund directly. Don't trust the sales will provide any after sales service. The importance to them is to sell more and get more commission. Why bother to advice you afterward?

Would you like to have a low but regular return OR high but not guarantee return ?
I suggest you to build up the plan with insurance company because a specific agent
will take care your plan and give you investment advice.
Send me a email and I will give you some information.
[email protected]

different tool have different advantage and disadvantage.
let me point out some:
for the saving plan, (Aviva, Generali, Zurich, Friends, AIA in terms of their charges, performance, fund choices and flexibility), of course they will have a charge per year, and it is expensive at the first few year. but this plan will be cheaper when you keep on using it at the later time. That why many people use them for retriement.

if you go to bank, u should pay inital charge 5 % when you buy the fund each time. And you need to pay shifting charge when you wanna change your investment objective.

for the performance, it is base on the fund choice, not the plan itself.

if you want to know more, you can contact me @

[email protected]

Say you put aside $8k per month, roughly $100k per year. Five years later you expect to get $500k+, depending on the return of investment.
If you go for insurance, the admin cost /fund subscription and management cost, plus insurance costs will eat up much of your investments.
If possible I suggest you invest directly with the funds e.g. JFFunds, or you just buy funds via banks without following any monthly savings plan. This provides you flexiblilty especially when you want to rebalance your portfolio or draw money for your house.