The 62% return on domestic gold prices (and gold ETFs) since the end of 2018 has left many Indian investors who are invested in equity and debt mutual funds with a let-down feeling.
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in its latest meeting has sent out mixed signals about the future direction of interest rates. Citing an uncertain inflation outlook, it called a pause to its repo rate cuts, holding the rate at 4 per cent. At the same time, it also promised to continue its ‘accommodative stance’ due to unprecedented Covid stress on the economy.
In our PrimeTime webinar on ‘Choosing the Right Term Insurance’ last Saturday, we received many thought-provoking questions from our subscribers and viewers that we could only partly address, given the paucity of time. Here’s a more detailed FAQ on term insurance based on your feedback during the webinar. Hope you find it useful!
With interest rates on bank deposits, small savings schemes and most categories of debt funds taking a knock, many investors are on the lookout for that one miracle avenue that will give them high returns with capital safety. Gilt mutual funds, which invest only in government bonds, on the face of it, look very appealing today because of their high past returns.
Apart from allowing you to structure your term insurance plan in different ways through options, life insurers also tempt you with another set of add-ons – riders. Riders allow you to cover additional risks to your income, for an extra premium added to your base term plan.
Pure term plans from life insurers are, at their core, very simple products. You pay regular premiums to the insurer during your working years. The insurer promises to pay your beneficiaries a lumpsum in the event of your untimely death. This may lead you to believe that buying a term insurance policy is a cakewalk.
Life insurance must surely figure among the most misunderstood financial products in India. Some folks think of their insurance policy as an investment, others as a compulsory portfolio component and yet others as an estate planning vehicle.
Most Indians harbour the notion that they cannot do without life insurance. One of the first ‘investment’ products that young Indians are encouraged to buy, on landing a job, is an insurance policy. But this is based on a flawed understanding of life insurance as a product. Life insurance isn’t designed to enrich someone on your death. Its primary purpose is to compensate your dependants for the loss of your income in the event of your untimely death. So yes, there are many categories of folks who simply don’t need to buy life insurance. Here are the main ones.
When buying life insurance, most good advisors recommend that you go in for a pure term plan. A pure term plan is an insurance policy that offers life cover (with no investment component, bells or whistles – we’ll tell you why you don’t need those in a later article) for a specific ‘term’ or period of your life.
With interest rates on debt options falling steeply in the past year, retirees, pensioners and those seeking to supplement their income with fixed deposit schemes have seen a sharp dip in their cash flows. In this context, it is good to see India’s largest bank – State Bank of India (SBI) – coming up with a special deposit scheme for senior citizens while revising its fixed deposit rates recently.
After the Franklin Templeton debacle, CEOs of asset management companies have been out in big numbers across media to reassure investors that this was an isolated case and that there’s no crisis for the debt fund industry itself.
With returns failing to match risks and RBI relief measures complicating life for lenders, the next six months promise to be a minefield for debt investors. Here’s how you can navigate this
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