SINGAPORE – An investor keen to earn a bit more interest ended up losing all her $200,000 savings after she was swayed into buying a complicated financial product she did not understand.

The woman, a 58-year-old customer service employee earning $3,000 a month, wanted to put the inheritance from her late husband into a fixed deposit but was convinced by a bank sales representative to consider “other products that could give a better interest rate”.

The customer – we will call her Madam Goh – had secondary-level education, and could read and understand Chinese, as she was from the Chinese language stream. She was given documents in Chinese to read and sign but she did not check them and chose to believe everything the bank employee told her.

It was not disclosed what returns she would get, but she invested the entire $200,000 without understanding what she was buying. To…