01
Benefits you have never counted
PhilHealth. SSS. A company HMO. Possibly a group life certificate you have genuinely never read. You are not starting from zero. You have just never totalled it, so you cannot say what is missing.
LICENSED FINANCIAL ADVISOR / SUN LIFE
Nobody builds a house without a plan. Most people build a life without one.
I am Rodel Hermogenes. I will not name a product in our first meeting. I will show you what you already have, what it actually does, and only then what is missing.
Free · About 5 minutes · No obligation
- 5+
- Years advising
- 100s
- Policy consultations
- Top 2
- Advisor, Cameron Awards
- LFA
- Licensed with Sun Life
No product gets named in the first meeting. That is not a sales technique, it is the whole method, and you are welcome to hold me to it.
WHY I WORK BACKWARDS
Insurance should never be sold with pressure or fear.
You have met the other kind of advisor. He has a product in mind before he has your name. He opens with a story about a man who died young, and he needs a signature tonight because the offer closes tonight.
That is not advice. It is a sale wearing advice’s clothes, and it is the reason so many Filipinos own a policy they cannot explain. They were sold something before anybody bothered to find out what they already had.
So I run the meeting backwards. Before I recommend anything, I want to know what you earn, who leans on it, what your employer already covers, what you owe, and what you actually want in ten years. Then I show you your own numbers back, and we plan from there.
It costs me sales. It is meant to. If the honest answer is that you should build an emergency fund and come back next year, that is the answer you will get, and I will still take the meeting.
WHAT THE SURVEY KEEPS FINDING
Most people are not uninsured. They are unaudited.
A few hundred consultations in, the same four things surface almost every time. Not one of them is a person with no coverage. They are people who have never once had their coverage added up.
02
A policy nobody explained
You signed it years ago. The agent was lovely and has since changed careers. You can quote me the premium to the peso and not one line about what it pays, when it pays, or what quietly voids it.
03
A retirement number nobody has run
Ask what your SSS pension will actually be and almost everyone shrugs. It is a knowable figure. It is usually a fraction of what people assume, and finding that out at thirty is very different from finding out at sixty.
04
One account doing five jobs
The emergency fund, the house fund, the tuition fund, and the retirement fund are all the same savings account. That holds fine, right up until two of them are needed in the same year.
None of this needs fear to be persuasive. It only needs to be written down. That is all the assessment does, and it is why I will not recommend anything before I have seen it.
WHO I HELP
Five people I keep meeting.
Different situations, same starting point: nobody has ever sat down and added up what they already have.
HOW WE WORK
Survey, then design, then build.
The order is not a stylistic preference. It is the only thing that separates advice from a pitch.
Step 01
Survey
Ten short sheets, about 5 minutes. What you earn, who leans on it, what your employer already covers, what you owe, and the thing that actually keeps you up. Most people have never been asked half of these.
Step 02
Design
We meet, on Zoom or across a table, and I read your own numbers back to you. What you already hold, what it genuinely covers, where the holes are, and which holes are not worth filling. The drawing comes before the product.
Step 03
Build
Only now does anything get recommended, and it is sized to a monthly figure you set rather than one I would prefer. If the honest answer is that something else should be fixed first, that is the answer you get.
I answer my own messages, usually inside a day. What you tell me does not go anywhere else.
WHAT GETS DRAWN
Six things a plan can hold. You will not need all six.
Which of these end up in your drawing is decided by what the survey turns up, not by what I would like to sell.
Income protection
If your income stopped, this is what keeps the rent paid and the tuition current while the household works out what happens next. For a breadwinner it is the first thing we size and the last thing we cut.
Health protection
Critical illness and hospitalisation cover that pays on diagnosis. The whole point is that the money arrives before the bills do, so nothing has to be sold in a hurry at the worst possible time.
Retirement planning
Run your actual SSS figure and most people go quiet for a moment. This is the fund that closes the distance between that number and the life you had been quietly assuming.
Education planning
Tuition arrives on a date you already know and it does not negotiate. Funding it deliberately is the difference between a plan and a scramble.
Investment planning
Long term, pointed at a goal you can say out loud. Not a tip, not a flip, and not something you feel you have to check every morning.
Existing policy review
Bring whatever you already own, from any company. I will read it properly and tell you what it does, what it does not, and whether it is worth keeping. Frequently it is, and that conversation costs you nothing.
THE RECORD
Five years. A few hundred of these conversations.
Sun Life hands out plaques and I have a few. They measure volume, which is a fact about me. The photographs underneath measure the only figure I actually care about: households that now hold a plan they can explain to someone else.
- Top 5 Advisor of the YearSun Life, January 2025
- Top 2 AdvisorCameron Awards, October 2023
- Bronze Medallion, Advisor LevelPresident’s Month 2023
- 15 Lives SecuredPresident’s Month 2023
- 6 Families SecuredSummer Campaign 2022
Handover day
The end of the process, not the start of it. Every person here sat through the survey first, and every one of them can tell you what is inside that folder.
Most of these happen on Zoom, which means it makes no difference whether you are in Quezon City or Qatar.
SAID OUT LOUD
What people want to ask before they trust me with any of this
Why do you need my income and my birthday before we have even spoken?
Because without them, anything I tell you is a guess with a suit on. Age sets what you can be offered and what it costs. Income and dependents set how much cover is actually appropriate. An advisor who recommends a plan before knowing those two things is not advising, he is presenting the product he had in mind anyway. If you would rather just talk first, book a call instead and we will do it in that order.
Is this a sales call with extra steps?
It would be fair to assume so. Here is the part you can actually check: I do not name a product in the first meeting. The session goes on your numbers, and you leave with a written picture of where you stand whether or not you ever buy anything from me. If I open by recommending something, you will know I broke my own rule, and you should walk out.
What happens to my answers?
I read them. Nobody else does. They are not sold, not passed to other advisors, and not used to sign you up for anything. They exist so that the session starts with your situation instead of twenty minutes of me asking questions you already answered. If you want them deleted afterwards, say so and they are deleted, and I will not treat that as an opening to sell you something.
I already have a policy. Why would I talk to you?
Because a policy you cannot explain is a subscription, not protection. Bring it, from any company, including a competitor’s. I will read it properly and tell you what it pays, when it pays, what it excludes, and when it was last reviewed. A good share of these end with me telling you the plan is sound and to keep it, which earns me nothing and is exactly why the review is worth taking.
You are only five years in. Why not someone more experienced?
A completely reasonable question, and the honest answer is that experience is not the same thing as attention. What five years buys you is a few hundred consultations and no bad habits about how the job is supposed to be done. What it also buys you is an advisor who still handles every one of his own clients personally, and who fully intends to still be reachable when a claim finally needs filing. Judge me on how the first session actually goes. If it feels like a pitch, you have lost an hour and learned something.
What if I go through all this and decide not to buy?
Then you do not buy. You keep the assessment, you keep the plan, and you are better informed than you were, which was the point. I would rather be the advisor you call in three years and recommend to your sister than the one who closed you in week one and never heard from you again.
BEGIN
Start with what you already have.
Rodel Hermogenes reads every answer himself before you speak. It is free, it takes about 5 minutes, and it ends with a session booked at a time you pick.
- Free, and free of any obligation to buy
- Private. Your answers are not shared or sold
- Ends with a plan, even when it ends without a policy