LIC allows its policy holders to pay their premia online. But as a customer you should know a few important details
- Available for non-ULIP policies only
- Credit card payments not accepted
- Payment accepted from Net banking facility of many banks including ICICI, HDFC, Citi, Axis etc
- One needs to register on the portal first to be able to pay the premium online with the following fields- Policy No. | Installment Premium (Rs.)| Date of Birth |Email Id
- The process generates an instant receipt for the payments made. Also it is a secure process & customers need not worry about their policy/premium details being compromised.
- And this service is FREE.

As the IRDA & SEBI tussle over ULIPs gets into a prolonged battle- it seems to have started claiming its first victims.
In a bid to make Life Insurance sales come closer to the transparency levels in Mutual Funds, IRDA has mandated all Life Insurers to clearly spell out the commission structure on their policies.

This means that any customer would henceforth know how much of his/her first year premium is being pocketed by the sales guy. This could give a lot of bargaining power in the hands of the consumers. As it is, the market is known to have numerous instances of agents passing back a part of their commission to customers to close sales. With this - one can only expect such dubious sales processes to increase.

Not surprisingly, most insurers are unhappy with the move & they feel that such disclosures on margin structures are not really required.

LIC of India is the oldest & largest Life insurer in our country. Its product portfolio boasts of multiple options and it can be a daunting task to choose the right fit from these.
Highlighted below are some of the most popular LIC products
LIC Jeevan Akshay
LIC Jeevan Suraksha
LIC Jeevan Varsha
LIC Jeevan Vishwas
LIC Jeevan Dhara
LIC Jeevan Saral
LIC Jeevan Bharati

Most non-life insurance products have seen an increase in their pricing in the Q3 & Q4 of 2009. And according to a survey by Marsh, the rates are expected to move further northwards.
The report analysed 10 major commercial insurance lines across 42 countries, including India.

According to the report:
- Premium on property increased by up to 10 per cent during the second half as insurers ceased to offer high discounts.
- Premiums on healthcare and casualty increased by up to 10-20 per cent as it became unsustainable for players to discount it. Prior to detariffing, group mediclaim policies were doled out as freebies with fire and engineering policies.
- Premium on professional indemnity and directors’ and officers’ liability (D&O) increased by up to 10 per cent and up to 20 per cent respectively.

Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority (IRDA) have initiated dialogues to come up with an agreeable regulation regarding the star product of India's Life Insurance industry- Unit-linked insurance plans (Ulips).

SeEBI spokesman announced that SEBI had agreed to explore various ways to resolve the matter. SEBI Chairman CB Bhave had an hour long meeting with the IRDA Chairman J Hari Narayanan.

The trigger for the meeting was the show cause notices issued by Sebi to life insurance companies for selling ULIPs without an explicit prior approval from SEBI.

IRDA maintains that the unit-linked plans were approved by them under the Insurance Act. SEBI's contention is that ULIPs if sold under collective investment schemes should come under their purview.

The final decision will have significant impact on the Insurance Industry as the ULIPs are a substantial portion of new policies sold in the industry

The Insurance regulatory body- IRDA- is said to be exploring an option of paperless Life Insurance policies, with an aim to cut down on the distribution costs.

If this goes through, Life Insurance policies could follow the share routes into a demat format- which means that in future your Life Insurance policies could reside in a digital format with players like NSDL & CDSL.

With Apollo DKV's Maxima and ICICI Lombard’s Health Advantage Plus have now started covering OPD expenses within their coverage heads.

This is being seen by many in the industry as a gradual shift towards inclusion of this most-common cost head in medical bills of patients.
OPD charges refers to the cost incurred by a policy holder where in the covered individual is NOT admitted. Typically most Health Insurance policies in the country have covered hospitalisation & related expenses & the OPD charges were borne by the policyholder on her own.

Most companies have feared large scale misuse when it comes to OPD charges. Hence even these plans come with some riders, mainly
1. The OPD claim can be done only once in the whole year
2. The Claim cannot be done within 90 days of policy commencement
3. There is a pre-defined cap on the OPD amount, that one can claim in such policies.

Hence we recommend that if you intend to go in for any of these polcies, do understand the OPD coverage (& the riders therein very clearly)

The Insurance regulator (IRDA) has proposed a new consolidated Life & Health cover for the poor families in India.
The plan if approved would cover a total of 6 crore families with
- Rs 1.5 lakh of Life cover
- Rs 1 Lakh of medical cover
- annual premium cost of Rs 1500- half of which paid by centre, rest shared by state & the beneficiary family

Since the underwriting insurance provider will also get a profit, the scheme is being touted as commercially viable in the long run.
Also from an administrative perspective, it would be easier to roll out a single mass scheme rather than managing the multiple schemes that are currently running parallely.

The scheme is estimated to have a total outflow of Rs 12000 Crore.

Secure Dreams plan from Max NewYork Life is designed to
- Protect the money invested through safe investments, but also looking at some growth in the portfolio
- No medical tests involved- this has been pitched as convinience
- Let the policy continue even if the insured passes away- done through premium funding.
- flexibility to choose the period of coverage
Secure Dream Eligibility

Death Benefit
- Incase the life insured dies MNYL will immediately pay the sum assured equal to 10 times of the annual premium.

Life Insurance Sep 09

The Indian life insurance industry grew by 12.85 % in new premium collected in 1st half of 2009-10. Most of the industry's growth can be attributed to the healthy 35% increase registered by LIC on its massive base.

Key highlights are:

IRDA, the insurance regulating authority has just approved the ULPs- Universal Life Policies for Bharti Axa Life Insurance and Max New York Life.

Its an interesting development in our opinion because of the inherent nature of ULPs.

Here are few of the salient features

1.Customers have flexibility in premium, sum assured as well as the tenure of the product.

2.Freedom to vary the payment of the premium over the policy’s life- you can start with monthly payments, switch to annual then quarterly and so on. What does not change is the premium quantum.

3. Also the policy is not automatically cancelled even if the customer fails to pay the premium. Even if the lapsed payment is not made , the ULP will be kept in force- what does change is the sum assured at the time of payout.

ULIPs have been seeing a decline in their share of new policies issued, for the last two years. This is due to a gradual & steady increase in the volumes of traditional insurance products like - term plans, endownment policies, money back plans & retirement plans.

With new & rigourous IRDA guidelines on ULIPs, agents have also started re-focusing on the traditional plans as the incentives are not capped here.
For the insurance companies also, a higher share of traditional plans gives a healthier portfolio and a higher valuation.

In the past the buoyant economy & stock markets provided insurance companies an easy tool to ride the wave- in the form of ULIPs. But lately they have realised that long term predictability of premium inflow is a critical aspect of valuation.

Birla Sun Life Insurance (BSLI) is one of the leading Life Insurance companies of India.
It has an impressive product portfolio.You can read about a few of the prominent policies here:

Term plans from Birla Sun Life

Insurance Dream Plan

MoneyBack Plan

Premium back term plan

Today's Economic Times had a nice article by Sarabjeet Singh (a partner at BMR Advisors) about how AML guidelines can be and need to be implemented in the Life

Rural insurance will see a fresh fillip with the introduction of a new policy which does away with the manadatory health checks for Life Insurance.

The initiative by Department of Posts will launch a Micro Life Insurance policy - no more require the insurees to disclose their present health condition or diseases at the time of buying the policy. This is clearly aimed at expanding the Life Insurance coverage in rural India.

The proposed insurance scheme, which can be availed by economically weaker sections (EWS) of the society and particularly women, will provide a risk cover up to Rs 25,000.

Life

IRDA has come up with some new guidelines to discourage agents from switching across companies, primarily to discourage & check policy lapsation.

Across India, most Life Insurance co's have been seeing almost 25% lapsation in their overall portfolio, and a big chunk of this is contributed by the agent channel. Most lapsation was observed to occur in orphaned policies (ie policies without an active agent in the system).

IRDA has now come up with the following guidelines:
- The agent has to submit details of all his policyholders including their contact details. The insurance company, in turn, has to ensure an alternative service arrangement for all those policyholders.

A retirement policy is basically an Endowment Plan where you get covered for life insurance term and the balance amount of funds are invested. These investments are done in debt and equity securities.

When you opt for a retirement policy, you get organized as you start saving for the future. Nowadays insurance companies offer various schemes under this policy. You can also get add on benefits on a basic insurance policy. Like a double accident benefit where the sum assured is doubled incase of accidental death. Also a joint life benefit where you can cover your loved one too in this policy. And profit plan where you can share the profits made by the company.

We now have various insurance companies which provide a wide range of insurance plans. There are also web site portals which help you with comparison charts of insurance companies giving you an overview of all their products.
An insurance plan helps us to provide the funds in times when we need it the most. It also helps in times when we are unable to get financially covered due to an accident. Such situation would arise when we meet with an unexpected accident. Car insurance is one of those important insurance policies one should be enrolled for. It protects you from unexpected expenses.

Riders:- When you avail of a simple life insurance policy you can add a rider to it. Which means you can get additional benefits attached to your policy. Riders are the additional benefits that you may buy and add to your policy .A rider gives you the benefit of increasing your risk cover in case of any certain events happening. For example, if one has opted for an Accident Death Benefit rider and the policyholder dies in an accident then the beneficiaries can get upto a maximum of twice the sum assured.

For a child’s future we now have insurance plans specially designed for them. The plan is made in such a way that once the child grows up or at a specific target date, he has sufficient funds to either pursue his education or for marriage.

These policies are a mix of life insurance and investment. In child insurance plans a small portion of the premium is goes toward providing the life insurance of the parent and a large portion of the premium goes towards the investments. In an unforeseen event if the parent dies within the premium paying period the policy continues and the future premiums are waived off and the beneficiary that is the child gets the Sum Assured and all other benefits and along with the bonus.

Nowadays insurance companies have introduced plans for every kind of need. They have products available to protect your home, life, health, car and more. One has various options to choose from.
But one has to be careful and make sure you choose the right policy for yourself. The policy which people normally invest are the basic ones like health , to save tax and make savings for the future like ULIP’s ,home and car.These policies benefits and are worth investing in.

The various kind of polices are:-

Features
• This is a with-profits whole of life plan which provides for annual survival benefit at a rate of 5½ % of the Sum Assured after the chosen Accumulation Period.
• The vested bonuses in a lump sum are payable on survival to the end of the Accumulation Period or on earlier death.
• The Sum Assured, along with Loyalty Additions, if any, is payable on survival to age 100 years or on earlier death.
• It offers three Accumulation periods – 10, 15 and 20 years. A proposer may choose any of them.
• Premiums can be paid regularly at yearly, half-yearly, quarterly or monthly intervals or through salary deductions over the Accumulation Period.
• A Single Premium can also be paid on commencement of a policy.

Survival Benefits

A life Insurance policy should be a part of every individuals life. It is an important tool for future security and also a financial benefit. People are now getting aware for the need of an insurance cover due to the uncertainties of life and providing for their family in the future. Not only as a security but an insurance cover meets the financial need of an individual like availing of tax rebates.

Nowadays , with various insurance companies springing up , there are many plans and covers which are being offered. Every individual has different needs hence one should avail of a cover only which benefits you.

Following are the most common needs of an individual to apply for an insurance cover.

Security Needs

An insurance policy provides for your needs incase of any disability due to any kind of accident or mishap. Also incase of death of the policyholder it provides an income for the family.

Savings Needs

There are insurance plans which help save up funds for future needs. Like children education, marriage and helps you save tax as well.

Investment Needs

Features
This is the best form of life assurance for family provision since it enables the Life Assured to pay the premium during the ordinarily vigorous and most productive years of life, relieving him from the necessity of making payments later in life when they might become a burden.

With Profits Single Premium policies do not cease to participate in profits after completion of the period for which premium has been paid, but continue to share in the periodical Bonus Distribution until the death of the Life Assured.

Suitable For
This plan is suitable for people of all ages and social groups who wish to protect their families from a financial crisis that may occur due to their Death.

Benefits

Bonuses

Features
This is the best form of life assurance for family provision since it enables the Life Assured to pay all the premiums during the ordinarily vigorous and most productive years of life. He need not pay any premium in the later stages of life if and when his conditions might become adverse.

With Profits Limited Payments Policies do not cease to participate in profits after completion of the premium paying period but continue to share in the periodical Bonus Distribution until the death of the Life Assured.

If the policyholder pays at least 3 years' premiums and then discontinues paying any more premium, a reduced paid-up assurance policy comes into force.

Features:
This plan is mainly devised to create an estate for the heirs of the policyholder as the plan basically provides for payment of sum assured plus bonuses on the death of the policy holder, The payment of sum assured plus bonuses are provided in the form of maturity claim on completion of age 80 years or on expiry of term of 40 years from date of commencement of the policy whichever is later.

The premiums under the policy are payable up to age 80 years of the policyholder or for a term of 35 years whichever is later.

Life Insurance Policies:

Annuities and Pension: There is an increased need for Retirement Plan due to Increase in Life Expectancy & Increase in the Cost of Living (Medical Expenditure). In an annuity, the insurer agrees to pay the insured a stipulated sum of money periodically. The main purpose of an annuity is to protect against risk as well as provide money in the form of pension at regular intervals.
There are two kinds of Pension policies-The Immediate Annuity and The Deferred Annuity. In the former, you have to invest a lump sum and start receiving pensions immediately. In the latter, you start building a corpus at a young age & on retirement; you receive annuities out of this corpus.

We sometimes invest in insurance policies without knowing the benefits of the policy. There are various policies like children's education plans, health insurance policies, life insurance plans with huge death benefits, and accident insurance covers. We do not look at the insurance coverage we are receiving; at times we buy a policy only for an investment or tax saving purpose under section 80C.

There are some points to be considered while purchasing an insurance policy:

One should start investing in a health insurance policy as soon as you start earning. Since health insurance has just picked up in recent years, many of our senior citizens would not have availed of this policy when they were young. Insurance Companies have now come out with medical policies for the senior citizens as well.

But, these exclusive mediclaim covers for senior citizens are a little different than the ones for the younger age group. If it is a fresh policy or renewal the cost is very high. This is cause of the risk factor is higher for senior citizens, hence the premium amounts are high.

The clauses in these policies also differ. One should look out for a clause on co-payment in your policy document, which may differ from one company to another.

Also sub-limits are very common in the policies. Most of these policies cap the room rent at 1% of sum insured a day and the cost of ICU at 2% of the sum assured. The overall limit is capped at 25% of the sum insured for an illness or injury.