Tag: Advanced Level

Health Insurance Inflation in India – Have you planned for next 30 yrs ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Lets talk about Health Insurance Inflation today ! . When you decide upon buying a health insurance policy, one of the pertinent questions that crops in your mind is the coverage amount – how much health insurance to buy? One of our readers Saket made an interesting comment on health care inflation, and how a decent cover today might look so small in distant future and raised the issue of “renewal” of policies by companies.

The Health Insuranec companies, eargerly selling policies to younger age group (mostly), are actually giving them a false sense of security about their twilight years. No doubt, the current policy will be good for next 5 years, but not later than that because of the health insurance inflation. So this sense of security has a shelf life of max 5 years. After that my fate will lie in the hands of insurer-whether it finds my policy upgrade worthy or not. Considering a most conservative healthcare inflation rate of 15% , a humble 3L coverage requirement as on date for a 38 yr old would translate into a whopping Rs 130 Lakhs ‘Final Amount’ at the age of 65 , the calculation is fairly simple – 3,00,000*(1+.15)**27 =130 lacs

Health Care Inflation In India
Coming to the question, we can now clearly see that decision of taking health insurance in current moment depends on two points. which are

a) Health insurance is a super looooonnng term investment, which you would need most in your old age, beyond say 60 years of age.

b) It’s common knowledge that Hospital costs are increasingly rising, gradually becoming unaffordable, to the common man.

How much is enough to financially support your family’s healthcare needs, ensuring you have a peaceful retirement life. Let us take this up, step-by-step.

Costs of common surgeries & Hospital Costs In India

The cost of some major surgeries in hospitals across India has gone up in recent years. Going by these numbers, assuming only one surgery is required during a year, per member; a sum insured of Rs. 3-4 Lakhs should be good enough for the year 2012. Major supply deficit with respect to healthcare infrastructure – hospital beds, doctors and nurses, increase in cost of medical equipment’s, land has resulted in an increasing trend of health insurance inflation. Here are the 2012 costs for surgeries, compared with costs in 2007.

 

Sr. No Treatment 2012 Cost 2007 Cost Increase
1 Cataract 24,000 16,000 50%
2 Angiography 22,000 14,000 57%
3 Coronary Artery By pass Graft (CAGB) 2,35,000 1,65,000 42%
4 Appendectomy 42,000 28,000 50%
5 Heamorrhoidectomy (Piles) 35,000 21,000 60%
6 Cholecystectomy (Gall Bladder removal) 52,000 32,000 63%
7 TURP (Prostate Surgery) 62,000 37,000 68%
8 Angioplasty (PTCA) with 2 stents 2,45,000 1,55,000 58%

 

The costs of common surgeries have increased by 50-60% in 5 years! This means healthcare costs have increased by 9-10% year-on-year, since the last 5 years. We spoke to Sudhir Sarnobat, CEO at Medimanage. Here’s what he had to say

“The average annual health insurance inflation would be at 5%, if you look at 30 years duration. The hospitals do not increase their tariffs every year. Generally, they increase it by around 15-20% every 2-3 years. This would effectively come to 5% CAGR.” “India is currently having Supply Deficit when it comes to Hospital Beds. But we are seeing a good amount of capacity increase in beds in last 7-10 years which should continue to grow. On the other hand, our population is stabilizing. In 15 years, the equations should change & ease pressure on prices.

India is a developing economy and from credible reports, will continue to be on growth path for next 10 years. After that once the wealth distribution is even, we would see stabilization of inflation (world over that’s been the phenomenon, look at US Medical Inflation for last 5-7 years, it is 4%)” Sudhir added.

Some reports on Hospital infrastructure talk of a major crisis in the making in the Healthcare Industry, due to overflowing demand, coupled with very slow growth in the poor hospital bed to patient and doctor to patient ratio in India, primarily due to deprived participation from the Govt. A Tower Watson Report pegs healthcare inflation in India at 13% for the year 2012.

In my opinion, while costs are bound to rise due to the slow growth in the ratios, on a 30 year horizon they have to plateau somewhere. Looking at this, I suggest, let’s take the inflation year-on-year for the next 10 years at 12%, and then average 5% for the remaining 20 years.

Health Insurance Inflation and Future Costs

Factoring healthcare inflation on Rs. 4 Lakhs of costs expected today, in 10 years, @ 12% inflation, the sum insured requirement would increase to Rs. 12 Lakhs, per member. In 20 years @ 5% inflation, to Rs. 20 Lakhs, and in 30 years to 33 Lakhs. For calculation of floater coverage, take 50% ad hoc for every adult member and 10% for every child, and here’s the kind of cover you will need, for some of the family combinations.

Health Insurance Inflation for Family Floater Policies

So a family of 2 – Self and Spouse will need a cover of Rs. 50 Lakhs year-on-year every year, from the age of 60. This is a huge sum, and looks unaffordable to most of us. So, what does one do? A middle class guy would either have to “afford”, “plan” or “pray” be able to afford such astronomical expenses. Let’s see how we can plan to pay such healthcare expenses.

Solution to the problem

Look at the Present Value of Rs. 50 Lakhs at 10% inflation on 30 years, it calculates to just Rs. 3 Lakhs. So though the problem looks big, it definitely can be resolved by the power of financial planning. Here are the steps we recommend you to create a fool proof plan for your healthcare expenses.

a) Commit yourself to healthy living: Yes, it’s very awkward for a Health Insurance services company, asking you to commit to health, but then we believe that Healthy living is the best form of Health Insurance. Healthy living would of course mean Regular Exercise, Healthy nutrition and No ill-habits. Such lifestyle will simply help avoid huge hospitals bills. Read an excellent article on Health SIP by Nandish.

(b) Given point (a) is a way of life for you, you now need to create a Long term and Short term financial plan, for the unavoidable healthcare expenses, like hereditary ailments (Diabetes, Thyroid), age related (like knee replacement), or infectious diseases (like Malaria), or even diseases like Cancer (which still have many unknown causes. Perfectly healthy people have got cancer, in spite of no ill habits).

Note, if you cannot commit to point (a), your needs for long term and short term funds increases multi-fold, to cover healthcare expenses.

How do you create such fund?

Here’s what I recommend should be your step-by-step health insurance investment plan.

  • Buy Health Insurance, preferably one which covers you for lifetime, and provides a no claim bonus, for the sum insured of Rs. 5 Lakhs individual or Rs. 7-8 Lakhs Floater. If you are buying plans, with Restore options, then the sum insured could be lower at around Rs. 5 Lakhs.
  • Take a good top-up plan, which takes your cover to a floater of Rs. 10-15 Lakhs for the entire family.
  • Invest in a Rs. 5-10 Lakhs critical Illness plan, which covers maximum no. of ailments, especially for the earning members of the family. This will help you get lump sum payment for critical ailments, and compensate for any loss of earnings. You can also explore the option of a more comprehensive benefit plan with your health insurance advisor, with products like Tata AIG Wellsurance, Aegon Religare iHealth, which provide lump sum benefits for large no. of surgeries, in addition to the Critical Illness benefit.
  • Plan a Healthcare Contingency fund, for Rs. 15 Lakhs for individual, and Rs. 25 Lakhs for a family of 4, maturing at age 60. A contribution of Rs. 15000 per annum at 10% return will accumulate Rs. 25 Lakhs in 30 years.

So what’s the total investment for your healthcare financial plan?

Here is the approximate outgo you would incur.

 

Type of Plan Sum Insured Tenure Costs
Health Insurance Rs 5 lacs 30 yrs Premium Rs 6,000
Top up Plan 5 Deductible/15 SI 30 yrs Premium Rs 5,000
Critical Illness Plan Rs. 5 Lakhs/20 Illness 30 yrs Premium Rs 3,000
Healthcare Contingency Rs 25 lacs 30 yrs Investment Rs. 15000

The plan above is indicative and would have to be customized depending on some of the following factors

  • No. of members you want to cover
  • Their age
  • Their health condition
  • Family history of critical ailments like
  • The city where claims are expected
  • The type of hospitals, rooms you prefer.
  • Your lifestyle.

What do you think about health insurance inflation and your thoughts on renewal decision by the companies. Do you think creating your own health care corpus is a better idea rather than depending on health insurance policies?

6 changes in mutual funds done by SEBI recently – Good or bad ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Recently, SEBI has made some of the biggest changes in mutual fund regulations to revive the mutual fund industry.  Some of the measures which are made are said to be helping AMCs and distributors more than investors. We will look at 6 major changes done in the meeting and the full detailed circular will come in few days.

Mutual Funds changes by SEBI

1. Higher expense Ratio allowed

Do you know that close to 45% of mutual funds money comes just from Mumbai? Around 87% of AUM in mutual funds comes from top 15 cities in India, which means that only a minuscule 13% of the mutual funds money belongs to small cities in India. Penetration in other parts of country is very, very small and not encouraging. Now SEBI has proposed to increase the Expense ratio by 30 basis points (0.3%) if the mutual funds are able to increase their reach to smaller towns in India and increase their contribution to 30% . In short, if a mutual funds is able to get more than 30% of its AUM from other than top 15 cities in India, they can charge a 30 basis points expense ratio higher than its current expense ratio. Lower contribution means proportionately lower expense ratios.

The big effect, is that now there will be higher expense ratio for everyone. So inflow from smaller cities will affect investors from bigger cities. Investors from big cities will have to bear the burden of increased expense ratio.

2. No internal limits in Expense Ratio

A very big change which goes in favor of AMCs is the removal of internal limits on the expense ratio and for what it can be used. Earlier there was a limit on the AMC to charge up to 2.5% expense ratio (up to 100 crores AUM), but it was allowed to charge only 1.25% as Fund Management Charge and 0.5% as distribution charges. The rest was taken as their profits.  So earlier suppose a Mutual Fund charged 2.25% as the expense ratio, then they compulsorily had to allocate 1.25% as Fund Management Charge and 0.5% for distribution.

But now, that sum limit has been removed and mutual funds are allowed to allocate expenses the way they want. This means you can now see more advertisements, more commissions to the distributors and more aggressive selling. While this is a very big change which will make AMCs happy, they will still have to keep a check on the expense ratio because of competition from other AMCs.

3. Putting Exit Loads back into the scheme

You must be wondering what happened to exit loads earlier, where did it go? When a investor got out of a mutual funds , he was charged an exit load if he quit before 1 year. That money was not transferred back to mutual fund, nor was it the profit of the mutual fund. It was actually transferred to a separate fund, which was used for sales, distribution and marketing. But now, when a investors exits prematurely, the entire exit load money will be credited back to the scheme account and will not be treated as AMC profit. However an equal amount (capped at 20 basis points) can be included in expense ratio back to compensate the AMC loss due to outgoing investors, which means that overall, for the investors on one hand,  the AUM gets increased (NAV increased marginally because of exit load money coming back to them), while at the same time they’re paying more in expense ratios, so the net effect of this would be, no gain no loss to both the parties.

4. Direct Plans with lower expense ratio

SEBI has directed that for each mutual fund, there has to be a equivalent Direct Plan with a lower expense ratio. So for every mutual fund XYZ, now you will see XYZ and XYZ-Direct options. So XYZ will come with higher expense ratio, and XYZ-Direct will have lower expense ratio. Many people who research mutual funds and like to buy it on their own directly from AMC by passing agents and other online distributors, this option will be cheaper and makes sense. However, many distributors are not happy with this move and think this will “kill” their business, all because investors will then just invest into the direct options.

Note, SEBI has not yet clarified by how much lower, the expense ratio of the Direct plans will be and if it will be mandatory for each and every plan or just some categories. We’ll need to wait for the final circular, to find out.

5. Financial Advisers and Distributors separation

Very soon, financial advisor regulation will come into effect. This means, now there will be some minimum qualification, registration and guidelines for financial advisers. They will have to register with SEBI and a separate body of regulators will soon be created for this. A financial advisor is a professional who advises his clients on investments for a “fee.” The important distinction being, he wont be able to earn any money from commissions by selling financial products. If a person wants to sell financial products and earn commissions out of it, then he will not be able to “advise” the clients. But CA, MBA, and several other professionals are kept out of this rule and even mutual fund agents who have a valid ARN code are kept out of this rule because their basic advice is seen as the extention of their work. There is still more clarity required on this, so don’t conclude anything yet.

What does it mean finally ?

If you are wondering what it means overall in single sentence, then it means increased costs (expense ratio) and lower returns for investors, but it may not be that bad as you think. Dhirendra Kumar of Valueresearchonline feels that the expense ratio increase will be in range of 0.1% to 0.4% range.

All in all, investors could see a 0.1 to 0.4 per cent increase in the fee that they effectively pay to have their funds managed. Any increase ends up reducing the returns that funds generate but all in all, this has been a deftly managed round of reforms that could get a decent bang for the buck.

Lets see all the changes and what effect it had finally on different aspects

 

Criteria Before Now
Expense Ratio Charged Maximum 2.5% allowed (depending on the AUM) Now additional 30 basis points is allowed if the fresh inflow’s from smaller towns
Internal Limits on Expense Ratio Internal Limits of 1.25% for Fund Management Charges, 0.5% for distribution costs No internal limits now
Where did Exit Load go ? Earliar it went to a seperate fund used for marketing and sales Will be added back to Scheme AUM, but will not benefit investors because of equivalent increase in expense ratio (limited to 20 basis points)
Direct Scheme of Mutual Funds Earliar there was no distinction between a investment made by agent or directly with AMC A new category called “Direct” will be introduced which will have a lower expense ratio.
Service Tax Borne by AMC Borne by Investors
Distinction between Adviser and Distributor There was no distinction earlier The regulations are now coming in . Advisor and Distributer will be separated.

 

What do you think about these changes ? Which changes do you think are in favor of investors and which are against them. How will this affect your investments in mutual funds in coming months and years ? Are you happy about these changes ?

NEFT and RTGS – A detailed Guide

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Lets try to understand what is NEFT and RTGS and what is the difference between them. NEFT and RTGS are two main mechanisms to transfer money from one bank to another bank in India. Transferring money between two accounts in same bank is pretty straight forword and its a internal matter of the bank, it does not have to deal with other banks and their protocols, however when one bank wants to send the money to another bank in India, there is a defined mechanism it has to be done and hence NEFT and RTGS comes into picture. Both these systems are maintained by Reserve Bank of India. Lets understand both of these

NEFT – National Electronic Fund Transfer

NEFT full form is National Electronic Fund Transfer, and its a system of transfer between two banks on net settlement basis. Which means that each individual transfer from one account to another account is not settled or processed at that same moment, its done in batches . A lot of transactions are settled in one go in each batches. Presently, NEFT services are available from 8:00 am to 6:30 pm on weekdays (Mon – Fri) and from 8:00 am – 12:30 pm on Saturday.

Any NEFT Transfer done between 8 am – 5 pm generally gets settled on the same day, but if you deposit the money after 5 pm, then that will be settled the next working day. In case of Saturday, any money deposited between 8 am – 12 noon can be expected to reach the beneficiary account the same day.

NEFT Transfer Example

For example lets say Ajay has ICICI Bank account and Robert has a bank account in HDFC bank , Now Ajay deposits Rs 10,000 in Vijay account through NEFT transfer at 10:30 am . The money will be then taken out from Ajay’s ICICI Account and will be sent to Vijay’s HDFC bank the same day, then HDFC bank will credit Vijay’s bank account. In case money can not be transferred to the target account (beneficiary account) , the money will be credited back to the source branch within 2 hours of the batch in which it was processed.

RTGS – Real Time Gross Settlement

RTGS full form is Real Time Gross Settlement and its a system of money transfer between two banks in real time basis, which means the moment one bank account transfer the money to another bank account, its settled at that time itself on real time basis between the banks, but the beneficiary bank has to make the final settlement to the bank account within two hours of getting the money. RTGS is the fastest possible money transfer between two banks in India through a secure channel.

Let me give an example, lets say Ajay has a SBI Bank account and Vijay has an Axis Bank account, Ajay transfers Rs 5 lacs to Vijay’s account  through RTGS transfer, SBI bank instantly transfers Rs 5 lac to Axis Bank, now Axis bank has 2 more hours to deposit it in Vijay’s account . Hence in worst case even with RTGS transfer there can be delay of 2 hours.

NEFT and RTGS Timings

NEFT and RTGS Charges

NEFT and RTGS transfer charges depends on the Bank. RBI has guidelines for the maximum fees which can be charged, but it finally depends on the bank in question. Note that NEFT and RTGS charges, varies depending on the amount transferred and the timings when its done. While NEFT charges depends purely on the amount transfered, RTGS charges depends on the amount transferred as well as the timings of the day when its done . A RTGS transfer early will cost a little less charges. Note that, Service tax is also applicable to the charges. Below are the charges shows for NEFT and RTGS for retail banking (not for institutional banking)
NEFT and RTGS Charges

Information required to make an RTGS & NEFT payment?

For making a payment through NEFT/RTGS, following information has to be furnished.

  • Amount to be remitted
  • Remitting customer’s account number which is to be debited.
  • Name of the beneficiary bank.
  • Name of the beneficiary.
  • Account number of the beneficiary.
  • IFSC code of the destination bank branch
Note : MICR code is generally not required for NEFT or RTGS transfer

Points to Note

  • Each Bank has their own NEFT and RTGS application form, which you can download from their website
  • RBI declared holidays each year when you cant do NEFT and RTGS fund transfer transactions, see 2012 list
  • To find out different bank branches which are enabled for NEFT and RTGS transactions, you can see this RBI list

Difference Between NEFT and RTGS

Finally let me list down all the differences between NEFT and RTGS in a table, so its easy for you to understand the conclude finally.

 

Criteria NEFT RTGS (Retail)
Settlement Done in batches (Slower) Real time (Faster)
Full Form National Electronic Fund Transfer Real Time Gross Settlement
Timings on Mon – Fri 8:00 am – 6:30 pm 9:00 am – 4:30 pm
Timings on Saturday 8:00 am – 12:30 pm 9:00 am – 1:30 pm
Minimum amount of money transfer limit No Minimum 2 lacs
Maximum amount of money transfer limit No Limit No Limit
When does the Credit Happen in beneficiary account Happens in the hourly batch Between Banks Real time between Banks
Maximum Charges as per RBI Upto 10,000 – Rs 2.5
from 10,001 – 1 lac – Rs 5
from 1 – 2 lacs – Rs 15
Above 2 lacs – Rs 25		 Rs 25-30 (Upto 2 – 5 lacs)
Rs 50-55 (Above 5 lacs)
(Lower charges for first half of day)
Suitable for Small Money Transfer Large Money Transfer

Are you now clear about the difference between NEFT and RTGS and their transfer charges?

Best Mutual Funds House [Graph]

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Which is the best mutual fund House ? Is HDFC better than DSP Black Rock or Reliance ? A very good way of looking at it is to see all the equity oriented mutual fund schemes of a fund house and check how many of them have outperformed its benchmarks in different time frames like 3 yr, 5 yr and 7 yrs?

For instance, Birla Sun life which has 16 equity funds with more than 5 yrs of history, but out of those 16 funds almost 8 of them have not outperformed its benchmarks, which is not very encouraging. The same kind of scenario is with SBI & UTI mutual fund houses.

On the other hand if you see HDFC , Franklin templeton, Reliance & ICICI Prudential Fund house, they have done much better, a higher percentage of their schemes has outperformed their respective benchmarks. Its a very clear indicator of a AMC overall performance . So its very important to understand which AMC’s are doing better over their whole basket of mutual funds and which are not. Below is an info graphic which I have re-aligned using a PDF document published at Livemint article here . Credit goes to Kayezad E. Adajania from Livemint who has done this research. Good show !

Best Mutual Funds AMC

100% of HDFC Funds outperformed their benchmark

You can see in the above graph that only HDFC is one fund house which has all its equity schemes outperform its benchmarks in 3 yr, 5yr and 7 yr category. Which Mutual funds are you invested in? Do you feel you should move to the fund houses which have shown better performances ?

Which mutual fund AMC is your favorite and why ? What do you have to say about this study ?

Mutual Funds Performance vs Benchmark Performance

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

How would you judge whether you have scored good marks in an exam? How do you define “good”? If you had a very very easy test and most of the questions were easy, would you call 80/100 a great score? NO. In the same way, if the exam was very very tough and made everyone cry, but you scored 75/100. Would you call it a great score then? Yes! So the point I want to make is there’s always a benchmark in any area to decide if the performance was good or bad. If you have done better than the benchmark, you did well, else you did bad.  This is exactly how mutual funds are to be judged. You can’t just say a mutual fund has performed bad or good based on the returns it has given in a time frame.

What is a Benchmark?

Each and every mutual fund has a mandate and rule defined on where will it invest and in what proportion. Like if a mutual fund says that it will invest in all the large-cap companies in India, then its benchmark would be mostly NIFTY because NIFTY is the indicator of the large-cap companies. And the whole point of investing in a large-cap mutual fund is that it should give you better returns then NIFTY because you can always invest in NIFTY and get the returns without any fees or risk. So only if a large-cap equity mutual fund beats NIFTY, you can say that it performed Good. Because if it does not then it has performed badly even after you paid him the fees, what’s the point of paying the fees and getting returns lesser than the Index which gives you some returns anyways.

In the same way a Small Cap Mutual Fund would have CNX MID CAP. One can just buy that Index and get returns from it based on the movement of the stocks in that benchmark. A mutual funds tries to take a call on what stocks to select and when to get rid of them to generate superior results and only if it can beat its benchmark, we can say that the mutual fund performed better than it’s benchmark.

Bad Market Performance in the last few years

So in any mutual fund, there is a benchmark and you can say that the mutual fund performed good or bad in a time frame only if the returns from a mutual fund are better than its benchmark for that particular period. Now based on this very simple rule, let’s see some cases. In the last few years, stock markets have performed badly. This bad performance from markets will obviously affect mutual funds performance too. So if a mutual fund has not given double-digit returns, can we conclude that mutual funds are bad investments? No.

Sandeep asked a question related to this 

I was told that HDFC Top 200 is an excellent fund . But I invested around 50,000 in that fund last year and now my fund value is near 46,000 . Is this fund really good ?

This kind of questions come to all the investor’s mind, this happens when you dont know how exactly you should judge a mutual fund’s performance. The only way here to say is HDFC Top 200 did good or bad in the last 1 yrs is to see if its return is more than its benchmark or less than its benchmark and to what extent?

HDFC Top 200 example 

If you look at HDFC Top 200 returns in the last 1 yrs from today (27th Apr 2012), its return has been -9.8 %. Now anyone hearing that kind of return will scream – “Oh .. that’s really bad”. But when you look at its benchmark (which is BSE 200), you can see that its benchmark has given around -12.06% So you can clearly see that HDFC Top 200 has outperformed its benchmark by 2.26% which means that it has done a better job.

Note that mutual funds have stocks as the underlying assets in which they invest, so mutual funds performance will depend totally on stock markets performance and in last 5 yrs, its not mutual funds which have performed badly, its actually stock markets, Mutual funds just mimick the portfolio’s in some manner and the real parameter of how good or bad they have done is to see how they have performed compared to the risk-free benchmark they are following.

Now coming back to the same example of HDFC Top 200 , it has given around 22.6% returns CAGR in last 3 yrs , but its benchmark (BSE 200) return was just 16.2% , hence you can say that HDFC Top 200 has done a good job and outperformed its benchmark by 6.2% on yearly basis, that’s really a good number.

Escorts Tax Plan Example 

Now lets look at 5 yrs performance of a tax-saving fund called Escorts Tax Plan, The fund has to give -15% return on absolute level in last 5 yrs (1 lac became 85,000) and an agent can say – “Sir – markets were doing badly in the same time, that’s the reason the fund has given bad return’s, in future it would do great” . In this case, all you need to ask is – “Fine, I can understand that market performance affects fund performance but has it performed better than the risk-free benchmark it was following? “

If you look at its benchmark “Nifty”, it has given a 24% positive return in the same period. This means that the fund has performed worse than the index which is totally free, while the fund has not performed even after bring run by professional fund managers. Then what’s the use of that fund.

So now you have a simple rule to judge a mutual fund performance

  • If Fund Performance > Benchmark  – The fund performance was good
  • If Fund Performance < Benchmark  – The fund performance was bad

Note that the duration should be good enough like more than 1 yr at least to say anything and the gap between the fund performance and benchmark performance should also be considered. You can say that a fund was bad just because its returns were 8% and the benchmark was 7.8%. that is very much close and does not conclude much.

Now a fairly good way of choosing a mutual fund is just based on how it has performed in the last many years compared to its benchmark. So I am putting up some top funds which have done very good compared to its benchmark

Some Top Mutual Funds vs Benchmark Returns

The following are some of the very good potential mutual funds for 2012 and they are really doing good overall. Let’s see their returns overall for 5 yr and 3 yr timeframe along with their benchmark returns. You can see some funds outperformed their benchmarks with huge margins. For example, Quantum Long term equity fund has return 28.38% in 3 yrs compared to just 14.78% from its benchmark which is Sensex. Thats 100% more, really brilliant.

Mutual Funds performance vs Benchmark performance

So overall the learning is that if you want to find out some good performing mutual funds, you should be looking if a mutual fund has outperformed its benchmark over several years with a good enough margin or not. If it has consistently done that, you can be clear that fund management is going well.

How often do you look into the benchmark? What else do you think should be looked at while judging mutual funds?

How to Create your own Child Policy with this Calculator

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Everyone is so desperate to buy a child plan (example). The features of so-called children plan are bundled in a way that it looks magical, as if there can’t be any other product like a child plan and hence, we pay much more than the price it really deserves most of the times. So today we will see how we can create your own child policy by combining term plan and other investments like PPF, FD or a Mutual Fund.

When you hear “Child Policy”, It looks extremely attractive. It gives you money on your death, It gives yearly income and it also gives you money on the maturity of the plan (generally when you child is ready for higher education) . So the point is that a child policy is so much in demand and attracts investors because of its features. However there are some issues with child plans in market. They come with high costs, rigid structure and very less control over it. Traditional Children plans (which are endowment or money back type) mainly do not deliver of returns front and ULIP children plans come with high cost .

So what can you do now ? Can we create a child policy on your own by combining Term Plan and Investments in some separate instrument, in a way that the Term Plan will take care in case of your death and investments will take care of higher education cost in case you survive.

So just like you pay a yearly premium for a Child policy, even in this case you will pay a fixed amount every year. A part of it will go as Term Insurance Premium and rest will go into investments. But in this case the term plan will also open ways for yearly income, as well as future big time expenses for child higher education as well.

When you are not there, the amount received by family from term insurance can be invested in such a manner, that it can provide a yearly income + lumpsum money NOW  + Lumpsum money in FUTURE. Lets us take an example and see how it will look like. Suppose you have a 1 yr old daughter for whom you want to create a Child Policy like structure, and you want to achieve these 3 things.

 

1. Lumpsum Money If you are no more , family gets 50 lacs upfront as lumpsum.
2. Regular Income  After your death, your family should get Rs 50,000 per year separately for your daughter education for next 20 yrs and this Rs 50,000 should increase every year by 9% (so that inflation is taken care of) and assuming this money will grow at 8% return (FD)
3. Money for Higher Education When your daughter turns 21 yrs old and is ready for her higher eduction, she should get another 25 lacs at that time.

 

In order to achieve the 3 things mentioned above , you need to buy a term plan for Rs 65 lacs (Sum assured) and start investing Rs 50,000 per year in something which gives 8% return on annual basis. Apart from this, you will need to clearly define to your family what actions they need to do once you are no more (these are simple tasks like opening a FD or investing money in PPF or balanced funds). The yearly premium for this structure would be around Rs 60,000 (50,000 investment + 10,000 premium for term plan) . Lets us see how this structure will be helpful .

If case of death (Your family gets 65 lacs)

  • 50 lacs can be taken out as lumpsum
  • 5 lacs can be invested one time to get 25 lacs at the end of 20 yrs
  • 10 lacs can be invested one time to get a yearly income of 50,000 increasing by inflation figures!

Incase you survive

  • Your investments of 50,000 annually will create a corpus of 25 lacs at the end of 20 yrs anyways

Lets us see this same example through a picture, which will clearly illustrate how this 60,000 premium payment will create a Child policy kind of structure and how it will help you in case of death and survival.

Children Policy Example

So using this structure you can achieve what a child policy provides. However this whole method has its own pros and cons. There is a lot of flexibility in this structure which a child policy does not have. However this kind of structure would need some level of trust and you will need to instruct your family about it and what they need to do incase you are not around. I think if you are preparing a will, you can clearly mention what needs to be done with the term plan money, so that family members can take those actions.

Download the Calculator and Start Planning your child Policy

Below is a calculator which you can download and punch in your numbers, the calculator will tell you how much term plan you need to take and how much investment has to be done per year. The expected return and inflation is decided by you. So if you want your family to put the money in FD or PPF after you are there around, then put the return expected as 8%, if you want it to be in Balanced Funds put 10-11% and incase of Equity Mutual Funds, put 12-15%. Also note that the premium for term plan will depend on the company you choose for taking a term plan (LIC is coming up with its term plan in few weeks as declared by them recently).

Download Child Policy Calculator Here

Comparison with Child Plans in Market

It’s important to see what is the difference between the child plans in market and this custom-made child policy by combining term plan and investments

Child Plan Comparision

Comparing it with LIC Jeevan Ankur

Lets compare this with LIC Jeevan Ankur Policy. If a 30 yr old male has to take a 25 lacs policy for a tenure of 20 yrs, He will have to pay premium of Rs 1,00,000 per year (approx) . In case of death, his family will get 25 lacs + 2.5 lacs income per year till maturity + 30 lacs of maturity (assuming 20% loyalty addition) , incase the person survives, he will get 30 lacs anyways on maturity.

This same thing can be achieved if a person does a 60,000 per year investment in PPF or FD (assuming 8% yearly return) and taking a term plan for Rs 55-60 lacs for a premium of say Rs 10,000 per year (for most company, the premium is 5,000 but lets assume LIC online term plan is taken which will come in few weeks now). So he has to pay total 60k + 10k = 70k per year to achieve the same results, with a lot of flexibility.

Do you think this whole strategy of creating your own child policy is of any use? Do you think it’s too complex? Share your views.

8 graphs on gold price movements (86 years data)

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Today I want to show you some patterns of gold prices from last few decades. There is no interpretation or conclusion but some findings and observations on gold price fluctuations in India. From last 10 yrs gold has been on a bull run and prices have multiplied many folds. In the last couple of weeks, gold prices have been extremely volatile and some analysts also predict that gold price upside movement is in threat. So I found gold prices for last 86 yrs (1925 – 2011) and did some number crunching and some graphs from which we get some interesting findings.

Gold Historical Prices

4 yrs Gold Price difference (absolute returns

I found out the price difference for every 4 yrs period i.e. from 1928 to 1925 (yrs) and saw what exactly was the difference in the prices, then 1929 – 1926 and so on… till 2007-2011. Just to give you an idea, gold price in 2008 was 12,500 and in 2011 it was 26,400; so the price difference was 111.20%. I used these data to plot a running 4 yrs price difference so at any point of time you can see how much was the return in those 4 yrs prior to that point. Note that this change in absolute in difference.  The major point to note is that majority people think that gold has performed outstanding post 2000 in a time frame of 4 yrs. But from the graph you can see that in 70’s time the 4 yrs period return was much more than what investors saw in recent time.

 

Gold Historical Prices

8 yrs Absolute Price difference runnin

This one is just like above chart, but this time its 8 yrs price difference. We are trying to catch that was the price change in an 8 yrs period. So for example, price in year 1980 was Rs 1330, then after 8 yrs – in 1987, the price was Rs 2570, which is a 93.23%… So like this I calculated the price difference for all the 8 yrs period and graphed it. There are very less 8 yr holding period when the returns from gold was negative, that happened 50’s and 60’s and just 90’s end.

Gold Historical Prices

4 yrs CAGR running

The next chart is the CAGR return chart for 4 yrs time frame and the graph is for running periods… that means 1925-1928, 1926-1929… 2008-2011. CAGR return is the main indicator of the performance of any instrument. If you look at the chart below you can see the ups and downs in gold performance and you can see how gold has performed in short run (4 yrs period) for a long time line. You can see that gold returns touched 20%-25% in 70’s and even in recent time it has performed wonderfully… which we all are aware of :).

Gold Historical Prices

8 yrs CAGR running

Then you can see the graph below which shows CAGR return on 8 yr running period. The interesting a little obvious fact is that it hardly gave any negative return in any 8 yrs time frame, only during 50’s and late 90’s it has performed badly.

Gold Historical Prices

20 yrs CAGR running

The real test of gold comes from a very long term performance and if we see a 20 yrs CAGR return on rolling basis (1925 – 1944, 1926-1945… 1992-2011), then you can see that most of the times the returns has been in the range of 5-10% and only in the 80’s people got best return if they had bought it in 60’s.

Gold Historical Prices

CAGR from 1926 (base year)

This chart is interesting; it calculates the CAGR return of GOLD from 1926 to all the years. I mean CAGR return from 1925- 1926, 1925-1927, 1925-1928 and then 1925-2011… So the base year is always 1925. This shows you what was the very long term CAGR return of gold considering it was bought in 1925. In a way this does not give us very strong conclusion, but still shows us some perspective.

Gold Historical Prices

CAGR from 1960 (base year)

This graph is same as above just that the base year taken was 1960 so considering gold was bought in 1960, the graph shows the CAGR return for different holding periods. You can see that apart from those who sold the gold in 80’s realised the best CAGR return, but those who held it for long, still have the returns in range of below 10%.

Gold Historical Prices

CAGR from 1980 (base year)

The last chart I want to show is with base year of 1980, you can see that over the long term the returns have converged to 10% & only in the last 10 yrs you can see the returns again going up.

Gold Historical Prices
What are your conclusions based on these charts ? What do you think about gold price movement from this point onwards ?

Saving Account number Portability – Is it Needed ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Saving account numbers will soon be portable in India. Finance ministry is working on this from some time and soon you will be able to change your banks without changing your Bank account number. Saving account number portability will be almost similar to porting your mobile number to different network carrier.

Why people don’t change banks?

A lot of people do not change their banks because there is a lot of headache involved in the procedures. If you change your Bank from ICICI to HDFC, it means you have to change the account numbers at different places (for ex SIP ECS). Also you will have to close the ICICI account
and open a new account in HDFC which means repeating the procedure all over again. These tasks stop people from taking action of moving from one bank to another. However with saving account number portability, you will be able to change your Bank account from bank A to bank B with less paper-work. The procedure is expected to be small as the KYC norms will also be taken care and no there will be no change in the Account Number.

Recently, with the Savings bank rates deregulation and NRE/NRO deposits deregulation has resulted in many banks increasing their saving bank interest rate to 6-7% (example YES BANK and KOTAK bank) and a lot of banks increased their NRE/NRO deposits rates from 3-3.5% to 8-9%, however a lot of people have not considered to change their banks just because of the WORK involved in the opening of new bank account. If saving account number becomes portable then a lot of people might have considered doing this.

Implementation of Saving account portability is a big task!

However this idea looks great to a lot of people, the whole idea of portability is not that easy and there are several challenges in this process.  Those are

Renumbering the 500 million bank accounts – There is approx 500 million saving bank accounts in India and these account numbers are 12, 13 or 14 digits account numbers in most of the cases where the first few numbers are for branch code . Now the first task before portability is achieved is that all these account numbers will have to be renumbered and there has to be same format for these. So that your account number after changing the bank is still same. Now how will this be achieved? How much realistic this is and how investors will be able to accommodate this part in their banking life.

Different banks having their own KYC rules – At the time of opening a saving bank account with a bank, it has its own procedure and documentation and they feel that they do the best job in that. When portability comes into picture, there has to be same kind of KYC norms with all the banks and they should feel confident about it, as they would not like to rely upon others KYC. This part would be rather challenging.

Do you feel you need this saving account number portability or is it a stupid idea ?

Review of Tata Retirement Saving Funds

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

There is a new retirement plan in India designed through a mutual fund that is launched by Tata mutual funds called the ‘Tata retirement saving plan’. The company is trying to market it using a word 30-30 challenge which says that there are 30 yrs of our work life and then 30 yrs of retirement life and you need to plan for the next 30 yrs in the first 30 yrs. The plan is currently at NFO stage and will be open till 21st Oct 2011.

Tata retirement savings plan

There have been some readers who enquired about this plan in our forum. Let me review the plan in this crisp article. Basically this plan has 3 different kinds of funds inbuilt which are called as 1) Progressive Plan, 2) Moderate Plan and 3) Conservative plan which all have different risk profiles (risky, balanced and safe). As per the asset allocation rules the investor’s money will be moved from one fund to another fund as per his age. So all investors who are below 45 yrs age will be in progressive fund (highest risk), then once they reach 45 yrs, their money will be moved to moderate plan and once they reach 60 yrs, they will be moved to the safest option called conservative plan. Once investor reaches 60 yrs of age, he will be getting pension from this plan in form of SWP (systematic withdrawal plan) which is nothing but a known way of withdrawing out of mutual funds systematically. There will be option of getting 1% of corpus monthly or 3% of corpus quarterly. Let’s see this auto switch and auto withdrawal options in a little detail.

Auto-Switch

There is an auto-switch facility in this plan, which means at each milestone you will be automatically be switched to the next fund without any exit load. So when a person reaches age of 45, he will be switched from Progressive plan to Moderate plan automatically and when he reaches age 60, he will be auto-switched from moderate plan to conservative plan. Note that one has to choose for auto-switch option at the time of buying the plan.

Switch between the funds manually

One can also switch between the funds manually whenever they want, but in that case if the switch is before 5 yrs from the date of enrolment, there will be exit loads applicable, but if 5 yrs has passed, then 3 exit load free switches will be allowed.

Auto systematic withdrawal plan (Pension)

A feature called Auto systematic withdrawal plan is there in this plan, which will start redeeming your funds and start giving you your money in the form of pension. There are two options in this. In the first option you can get 1% of your total corpus each month and in second option you can get 3% of your corpus each quarter, as decided by you. You will also have an option of not taking any pension amount through SWP route if you wish. So one can just leave his money in the fund and let it grow.

Tata retirement savings plan

High Exit Loads

As this is a long-term investments tool, the early withdrawals are discouraged and the exit loads are high. There is no exit load if you withdraw your money after 5 yrs of investment, but if you withdraw your money before 5 yrs there are high exit loads. The exit load comes down by 1% each year till 5th year. So in first year, the exit load is 5%, in second year its 4%, in 3rd year its 3% and so on… At last after 5 yrs, there is no exit load.

Some other points

  • Minimum Investments for Lumpsum = Rs 5,000
  • Minimum Investments for SIP = Rs 500
  • There is only growth options under this fund , no dividend options
  • As per the plan mandate, fund manager can also take upto 10% positions in derivative products ,which can be quite risky.

Good points

  • These kind of plans are much better than regular pension plans as there is a good enough equity component which is good for long term.
  • The good thing about this plan as a retirement plan is that you get a known amount (in percentage terms) from your money, unlike the NPS

Not so good points

  • As this is a NFO , one can not be sure of its performance, features are ok, but the real thing would be the performance of the fund.
  • The exit loads are high in starting years, which makes exit not so attractive incase the fund performance is bad and one wants to get out of it.
  • The fund has features which will come into effect after many – many years. For a 25 yrs old, we are talking about 20-30 yrs from now when the auto switching will start happening. It’s quite early to comment on how it will turn out then, because there is not much history at the moment about the performance of mutual funds with such long durations.

For Jagoinvestor readers who are quite pro in themselves, the personal suggestion would be to make their own diversified portfolio and have a full control on what they can do with it. This fund look good from features point of view, but it’s mainly for non-DIY kind of investors.

Full Brochure : Small Brochure

Hindu Undivided Family – Save more tax by creating a HUF in India

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you know how you can use Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) to reduce your overall tax liability? In this article I will give you tips and real life examples on how you can use HUF to save taxes legally.

Before that let’s understand what HUF is.

HUF Hindu Undivided Family

The concept of HUF says that apart from individuals there is another separate entity called “Family” which can also have its own assets and liabilities and even regular source of income, which should be taxed separately.

For example :

If an ancestral residential property is rented out, then the rent arising would be considered as Family’s income and not as income of individual. In real life this rent is shown as income of one individual and he pays the tax on it, however a HUF can be formed and the rent can be shown as the whole family income (HUF) and it can be taxed separately.

Until a few years, many Indians used to keep multiple PAN cards and used to show Income under different PAN cards and used these tricks to avail the benefit of slab rates by showing themselves as different persons. This however is illegal by law and is a punishable offence as one person cannot have more than 1 PAN Card.

But, one legal way of obtaining an extra PAN Card is to form an HUF. As the Income of an HUF is taxable in the hands of HUF and not in the hands of any Individuals, a separate PAN Card is issued for an HUF and the benefit of income tax slab rates can be availed on this PAN Card.

Formation of HUF

A false impression amongst people is that HUF needs to be created whereas the truth is that an HUF comes automatically into existence at the time of marriage of an Individual and no formal action needs to be taken for the same.

However, in case a person who wants to specifically register for creating an HUF, he can furnish a creation deed on a stamp paper (The Format of Creation Deed can be downloaded from here).

As HUF is governed by the Hindu Law and not by the Income Tax Act, individuals belonging to other religions are not allowed to form HUF except Jain’s and Sikhs who can create HUF even though they are not governed by the Hindu Law. Two entities are extremely important for you to know in HUF are the coparceners and members.

Coparcener is someone who has the right to demand the share of the property of family; coparceners are generally the Karta (Main decision maker of family, usually the Father, but Manmohan Singh had 5 years ago brought an amendment which stated that Females can become Karta & there can be an all female HUF as well), then sons & daughters, grandsons and great grandsons in order of their first right.

Wife of the Karta is not a coparcener or even spouse are not coparceners and hence can’t demand/ ask for any share in HUF, they are just merely members of HUF.

Example of Tax Saving by forming an HUF

As discussed above, the main advantage of an HUF derives from the fact that an extra PAN Card is issued for the HUF. We’ll explain this tax saving benefit with the help of following example.

Lets say there are 4 members in a family

  • Husband – Salary 9 lacs
  • Wife – Salary 7 Lacs
  • 2 Children without Salary
  • Additionally, one  ancestral property which fetches them an annual rent of 6 Lacs p.a

Now the Question is – In whose hands should this Rental Income of Rs. 6 Lakhs p.a. be taxed? In real life, the most sought after solution is to show the rent as income of wife or anyone who has no income or less income so that the tax liability is least. But is it the best solution?

Let’s see 3 different cases here in which this additional rental income can be shown and how tax can be saved!

Option 1 – If this Rental Income is shown in the hands of the Husband.

Hindu Undivided Family HUF tax advantage

Option 2 – If this Rental Income is shown in the hands of the Wife

Hindu Undivided Family HUF tax advantage
As this Income is arising to the family as a whole, the Govt has also extended this option of taxing this Income in the hands of the whole Family. Although very few people in India know this fact family income can also be taxed in the hands of the whole family by forming an HUF.

Option 3 – If this Rental Income is shown in the hands of the HUF

Hindu Undivided Family HUF tax saving

The above 3 options clearly indicate that Option 3 is the best option as the least tax would be payable by the family if the Rental Income is taxed in the hands of the HUF.

The tax saved by showing this income in the hands of the HUF is Rs.1,18,000 (i.e. difference between “tax paid if rental income is taxed in the hands of HUF” and the “tax paid if shown in the hands of the wife which is the 2nd best alternative”)

Please Note: For the sake of simplicity, Taxes have been computed without taking into account the “Deductions available under Section 80C“ and “Education Cess applicable on the Tax Payable”

Procedure to create HUF

These are the steps to create capital of a HUF.

  • First one should open a bank account with the name of Hindu undivided family like “AJAY HUF” with a stamp, ID Proof and the proof of the members of the family of HUF.
  • Important :- While opening a Bank Account in the name of HUF – Banks always ask for a rectangular stamp which states the name of the HUF and also the Karta who is signing it. A round stamp is not accepted as per RBI Circular. The same applies at the time of opening of bank account of Sole Proprietor as well.
  • Next is to apply for PAN (Permanent Account Number) of the income tax.
  • Now transfer money by gifts etc to HUF capital keeping in view the clubbing provisions and tax on gifts under Income tax act, Remember there is no Tax on gifts in kind though they may attract clubbing provisions in some cases.

3 real life tricks of saving taxes through HUF

1. Saving tax by getting gifts

One way of saving tax is by transferring the money received from strangers or family are taken as gifts in name of HUF. So if Ajay starts his HUF called “Ajay HUF” and he is getting some gifts from his father, friends or anyone else, he can ask them to give it to “Ajay HUF” and not Ajay itself.

That way the gift will be treated as income/asset of HUF and taxed separately.

One important point here, if some stranger is giving gift to HUF, there is a limit of Rs.50,000 on which no tax has to be paid, but actually it can go up to Rs 1.8 lacs as the taxable limit is that much, and if one also has to do investments of 1.2 lacs (total 80c limit), then one can afford to receive up to Rs.3 lacs of gifts in a financial year and there will be no tax liability at all.

2. Assign ancestral properties and wealth to HUF and invest it

If family is going to receive an ancestral property or any wealth, then it’s better to transfer it on HUF name so that whatever earnings happen in future in form of rental income or capital appreciation of assets becomes income of HUF itself and taxed in its own hands.

That way the total tax liability of family can be minimized.

3. Use HUF income for expenses and Insurance for Family

As HUF enjoys separate tax benefit under sec 80C, one can use the income of HUF for buying Life & health insurance for family and the permissible deductions can be availed for tax purpose in hands of HUF, so if the total premiums for insurance requirement of family is Rs.50,000 per year, then It can go from HUF income and also the individual can exhaust his 1 lac limit separately via PPF, ELSS and other tax instruments.

Also family day to day expenses can be used from HUF income and hence it will leave other members with more disposable income which one can use to service higher EMI’s if required.

Watch this video to learn more about HUF and Tax saving:

Some important Points you should know about HUF

  • For creating the HUF one need to get married, there is no need to have child or children for creating the HUF.
  • An HUF can recieve any amount in gift from bigger HUF’s (HUF of Father, HUF of Grandfather) or any gifts received by the members of HUF (birthday, marriage, etc.) can be treated as assets of HUF , but stranger can gift HUF, not more than 50000 rupees.
  • Daughter also continues to be a Coparcener after her marriage of that family whether she also will be a member of HUF of her husband. So that way daughters can be co-parancers in two HUF’s 🙂
  • HUF can pay remuneration to the KARTA of family for the interest and expenditure to run the family business.

Be cautious with HUF creation

While all the above points excites people on opening a HUF account immediately and start taking tax benefit, there are some caveats and one has to be little careful. Remember that HUF is a separate entity and represents the whole Family. So once some assets is assigned to HUF, then it becomes part of HUF only and one can be suddenly take money from HUF for personal purpose .

If other co-parceners of HUF demand the partition of HUF only then one can get his/her share of the HUF. Otherwise it will not break. Also for taxation point, a lot of people mislead the tax department buy using fake HUF transactions and therefore, HUF is looked with high degree of scepticism.

If the HUF is not formed properly and if the assets are income are fudged for evading tax, it can get you in trouble, therefore it’s highly advisable to hire a good CA and create your HUF in the best possible manner with right advice. There is no harm in paying 10,000-12,000 to a CA if HUF can give you 5-10 times tax savings.

It would be a great investment, not an expense!

HUF property cant be mentioned in the WILL

Though HUF is very useful tool but one has to use it very judiciously and thoughtfully. Don’t look for tax benefits only , but practical problems also. Be aware that you cannot make a will out of HUF property. Once transferred to HUF, the assets /property becomes of HUF and you no longer have any individual right on it.

To explain with example –

“A”, who has 2 daughters and a son.He long back ago purchased a house in the name of HUF and put that house on rent, so that the Rental income comes to HUF and will not be be added in his or his spouses’s income .

But now , he ‘s retired and wants that this property should be transferred to his son after his demise. But this is not possible as that property belongs to HUF. He can’t even write a WILL for HUF property and with the huge rise in Real estate prices, none of daughter is ready to leave her share in it.

Thanks to Manikaran Singhal to add this point

Who should actually go for HUF

HUF will be extremely efficient for those people who have a higher income and high saving rate and some form of ancestral assets which can be marked as “Family Assets”.

Evaluate if HUF can really give you that kind of tax advantage or not for people who do not have high salary or who do not have a big enough family. So make sure you can get the maximum out of the HUF and understand the limitations of opening HUF before you go for it.

This article has been authored by CA Karan Batra who blogs on charteredclub.com (Content added by Jagoinvestor with inputs from Karan)

Can you share how was the article and did it help you in understanding Hindu undivided Family? Are you going to open a HUF account?