SINGAPORE – About a year ago, Ms Teo Yi Ki bought an investment-linked insurance policy (ILP) with her very first pay cheque, having been convinced of the prudence of such an action by a financial adviser.

“I thought, oh my gosh, I’m being the most financially savvy person,” said the 25-year-old product manager.

But a few months later, she read the fine print and realised she was locked in to the plan for 25 years, and any bonus earned would be forfeited if she made a withdrawal within the first five years.

“For a lot of us, we don’t know what we don’t know,” said Ms Teo, referring to the challenges young people – especially first-timers – often face when buying financial products.

“We don’t know what questions to ask, and what to be concerned about.”

This prompted her and five others to create a web-based digital tool which helps to highlight key information and simplify jargon found in financial product documents.

They aptly named it Redflags.

The team of six began working on it after meeting at the inaugural Sparks x Build for Good Community Hackathon in June.

The event, co-organised by the People’s Association and Open Government Products, brought together young people keen on developing tech-driven solutions to tackle community challenges.

“In a person’s whole lifetime, there are many firsts for big financial decisions they might be uncertain about,” said Ms Teo, adding that this could come in the form of a student loan, work contract, investment, house, car or medical bill.

“We aim for Redflags to be the go-to guide for every first-timer dealing with financial documents.”

Built using Google’s Gemini large-language model and fortified with guardrails to prevent hallucinations – false, inaccurate or nonsensical information generated by an AI system &n...