Tag: Intermediate Level

Yes ! – You can withdraw your EPF without Employer Signature

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you know how to withdraw your EPF without Employer Signature ? Do you think if its possible at all ? Is your previous employer not signing your EPF Withdrawal documents? Have you left your company long back and now you can not take your past employer signatures ? Or is your EPF company stuck because your employer is not supporting you or helping you in withdrawal procedure ? Or it might happen that your employer relations with you mess up for some reason and now they are not ready to cooperate in the EPF withdrawal procedure and threatening you? Here are 2 real life examples of these kind of situation

Case 1 : Priyanka was also stuck with a company which was shut down and her PF was stuck

The last company i was working with has been shut down. Now I need to withdraw my EPF, however I am not getting any help from the company. I have tried to contact the GM – HR and the CA but no response. As the sum is huge, I am worried if I will be able to withdraw the amount without company’s approval or authorized signature. The full and final settlement has been closed and relieving letter has been issued by the company. Please advise how should i go about in this case.

Case 2 : Ramz was also facing similar issue but here employer was not supporting the employee for EPF withdrawal

One of my friend was in a similar situation few months back. I have pay slip but no relieving letter. When contacted with the finance dept, I was told that I cannot get the epf amount as I have not got the relieving letter. The amount will not be released by them even though an epf amount is mentioned in pay slip. He was asked to pay the amount for serving period of two months and then get relieving certificate and later only will they release the funds for epf account.

Now the question. Can one withdraw his EPF without the support of his past employer signatures or support ? Yes ! – There is a solution! .

Today we will discuss, how you can withdraw your Employee Provident Fund money without your past employer’s help. A lot of people feel that it’s not possible without employer involvement, but it’s not true! Let me start by sharing a bit about this.

Withdraw Employee Providend Fund without Employer Intervention

Employer can not control EPF money

Each month employer takes the EPF part, out of your salary and along with their contribution, deposit it into your EPF account with the EPFO organisation. Once they deposit it with EPF office, then it’s just your money and no one else’s. Your employer can not control it. However note, that your employer’s signatures are required on the EPF withdrawal form, to certify that you are not employed with them anymore and now you can withdraw the EPF.

A lot of people leave their jobs without serving the notice period or because of some other issue and employers do not help them to claim their Provident Fund money. Here is one instance on our Jagoinvestor Forum

I worked in a company in 2009 for few months. I had some issues with them and resigned from that company. I did not get any relieving order. All I have is my salary slip which has PF account no. Is it possible to get back the PF amount without the permission/notice to the previous employer which I worked ?

3 steps to withdraw your EPF without Employer Signature

Here are 3 steps you need to do to successfully withdraw your EPF without previous employer signatures.

Step 1

First download and fill up Form 19 (for EPF withdrawal) and  Form 10C (for EPS Withdrawal)

Step 2

Get it attested by any one of the following

  • Manager of a bank (PSU preferred)
  • By any gazetted officer.
  • Magistrate / Post / Sub Post Master / Notary

Step 3

Write down a letter addressing the regional PF commissioner, stating the reason why you have to get it attested and how you are facing issues with your employer. In case you have any proof of  unsupportive behaviour from your employer, better attach it. (This step is optional, and not mandatory)

Step 4

If you are unemployed, you will have to make an affidavit that proves that you are unemployed. Download this Affidavit Sample and get it printed on a Rs. 100 stamp paper with a notary or any gazetted officer signature on it (This Affidavit is part of our Jagoinvestor Wealth Club) . This is required because you need to be unemployed if you want to withdraw your EPF . If you are employed, you can transfer your EPF to your new employer.

Step 5

Send these forms to your regional EPF office and wait for next few months for some kind of action.

Step 6

Once your application is processed, the EPF withdrawal request will be honoured and you will be paid. If you still don’t see any action or response, then its time to File an RTI application to EPF Department for finding out the exact Status.

Legal Action against your past employer

Note that Employee provident fund money is totally yours and no matter what the situation, your past employer should be helping you in withdrawing it. It can be some issue your employer or you might have.., your employer can not say that they will not give signatures and create issues in your EPF Withdrawal.

If that’s the case, it might be time to teach them a lesson.

If you are 100% sure that you are correct and it’s a case of harassment, just collect all the documents which proves the harassment and then inform your regional Provided Fund officer about this. He will carry out an enquiry, contact the employer and if he finds them guilty, there can be legal action against the company and might even amount to imprisonment. It’s the Employer’s duty to keep records as per the law and also maintain the terms and conditions, failing which employer can get a notice under a section 7A, which lays the guidelines of strict actions against the employer. I got this from one of the RTI related websites 

Normally, the EPFO which maintained your EPF account should have settled the claim based on the signature of the Bank Manager since you find it difficult to get the form attested by your previous employer. They should not have sent it back to you telling to get the signature of the previous employer. The fact appears to be that the employer is not willing to sign the form for some reason or the other. (I presume the establishment is not closed but is still working). It is the duty of the employer to sign the settlement form. If he fails to do so the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner (RPFC) concerned can take action against him. You can make a complaint to the RPFC pointing this out and urging him to either settle the claim as it is or to get the claim signed by the employer and in case the employer declines to sign to take appropriate action against him instead of harassing you by not settling the claim. Please send this complaint by registered post and keep copy. After about a month if no action is taken file an application under RTI and ask what action has been taken on your complaint,people responsible for not taking action etc. Your claim will automatically be settled.

Conclusion

It’s possible to withdraw your EPF money without the help of your past employer. You just need to know the right steps and should also have the energy and motivation to follow up on the matter. Let us know what did you learn out of this article. Do you think this is something useful for you? From this article, did you understand properly how you can withdraw your EPF without Employer Signature ?

Why you should do background check for small real estate builders

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Should you buy real estate properties from small builders ? While you keep hearing about big real estate projects, there are tons of buildings and buildings and apartments build by small builders also and they are quite high in number. Today I want to share 3 instances of dealing with small builders.

Builders Background check

Case 1 : Real life case of Real Estate Fraud

One of the readers had invested in a property with a small size builder , but now he found out that the builder is arrested for fraud. He is now stuck with the investment and paying the EMI for the property whose future he is not sure about. Here is the full case

In Jan 2011 i have booked,Registered and stamp duty paid property located at Navi Mumbai(CIDCO property)and all the required documents are submitted to HDFC for under construction property.After verification and search report the Loan sanctioned. The payments are made according to Demands and Work completion by developer on time to time basis.Till the 70% of work completion all the payments are made(April 2012),but after that 19th July 2012 the developer has arrested by local police for cheating and fruad registration(Double registration) on his running projects.

In this issue he was arrested and the news spread across through all the media news papers that Customers are Cheated for Crores of rupees by Navi Mumbai Developer since May 2012.In this case on his arrest i have also made police complaint that, “The construction work has stopped since last two months and Developer has shut his office and mobile.According to media news i am also feeling that i was cheated and the home loan EMI are still there.”Now the developer and Police is also asking me to take back my complaint otherwise developer will sell that property to others and only give me the money which i have paid till the date. When i asked my bank about this to kinldy hold my EMI till the issue will solved.How do i pay EMI of the loan which i took for my Home and without getting home how do i proceed further for EMI?Bank said,”We have given a Loan to you not developer,even though all the documents are clear from Developer according to procedure.And my registration documents are Mortgage with the bank.So i have pay the EMI for the 70% Loan amount which i took from bank till the 70% work completion by developer.”Now i am paying EMI’s without getting Home. So guys pls think 100 of times before proceeding for Under-construction property.It doesnot matter whether it is a branded or Unbranded(Known/unknown Builder)

Case 2 : Unathorised Floor in the Project

One of the readers shared on our jagoinvestor forum that he has invested in a real estate project by a small builder, but the builder has violated rules and added another floor without approval. Now his money is stuck with the builder and he is not able to take any concrete decision

Recently I have booked a flat in bangalore with a small time builder. The catch is he has got approval (BBMP approval) for G+4 floors but he built an extra floor (My flat is on 4th floor). Does SBI approves the loan for apartment in such project? The builder is saying that there are 20+ loan approved from SBI (total 120 flats in project) and he will get my loan approved as well. He is also saying this is quite common practice now a days in Bangalore and he will keep this floor for renting purpose only.

Even if SBI approves my loan, should I buy this flat? What are the complications, I would face in future if selling off this flat (or will live in that flat). I have given 20% of the money as booking amount.
What are your suggestions in my case?

Case 3 : Builder not replying to many queries

I had a terrifying experience with a small builder, who projects himself as a Mid size builder(He completed one small project, of 20-30 flats and he himself given promotion as midsize builder and compares himself with some reputed mid size builders in Chennai).

I got all the documents from builder in a professional way(he gave all documents in set saying these are the documents required for legal verification) and gone for a lawyer verification(its my mistake not to wait for lawyer opinion) and he gave me enough evidences that he applied for a project approval form SBI( I told him, i will get HL only form SBI, after reading articles in Jagoinvester, Thanks to Jagoinvester for their precious articles) i believed him because he behaved very professionally(He is educated and worked for a consulting firm for more then a decade, making me believing he is professional) and i overshoot-ed the lawyers advice( i didn’t receive it for 15 working days) and made agreement and paid 20% of the property cost and then got a call form lawyer(actually lawyer couriered me the docs, but I didn’t receive them) saying courier was returned and he asked me to make a personal visit to his office.

The facts came into the picture with 10 queries( all of them are so simple like EC patta and couple of explanations) and i sent the same list to my builder and got promised, those silly queries will be answered in 5 days, and i waited for 15 days but no reply to lawyer from builder and after repeated follow-ups’(not with Mr. Professional, but with a staff in builders office) finally she went with answers and from my side i too gave the agreement copy for further evaluation and final advice from lawyer( as he is empanelled with SBI, it can be submitted for loan processing). The horrifying truths came out, he further raised additional queries and a builder cheating was projected. There are multiple problems in the land (it is total of 1.5 Acer).

1. Some part of the land was amortized with a PSU (not SBI) for 50L and he paid the amount in the month of July and obtained NOC (still the documents are under encumbrance) and attached the NOC with the documents and he is giving for customers for property verification. But when my lawyer made a background verification( as he has good networking with many bankers), it came to the limelight that he obtained loan again for 50L in the same bank after a month of time.

2. some part of this land is hereditary(legal heirs are 2 brothers and one sister) , sister didn’t sign the document and her brothers sold(here it is JV) the land to the developer, got her signature as witness.After some time she can go and fight legally for her rights on the property, and lawyer requested for a rectification deed and he objected and told he can provide a NOC(generally NOC is valid for 6 months of time, i really don’t know how NOC is valid in this contest)

3. DTCP approval is not obtained

4. There is difference in land available as per patta and land showing in project documents

5. Parent documents before 2004 are missing and told those can’t be retrieved

After presenting all the above(only critical are mentioned) queries, he tried to convince me and get my loan from some other financiers(of course i have a option to choose form PSU and NON-PSU), and offered some gifts (as he is planning to market his flats in Diwali offer such as free modular kitchen,( he increased the price of the flat by rs.200, but not for my booking, as I have done it earlier. Just to hold my booking he offered me this Diwali gifts)) and some other junk promises. I demanded for immediate cancellation of booking and refund all amount on the same day. However, I am in confusion state. If he clears all the above queries it is a great deal in that area and the price I paid was killer price.
I requested him to put all his words in a piece of paper (of course it is a judicial stamp paper of Rs.20, again Kudus to Jagoinvester for education me how to deal in such cases, especially with builders)Got a concrete promise to fix the queries in 15 working days else the entire amount will be refunded. 15 days passed and I have no communication from builder or from his office.On the final day I gave a call, asked him the status, and got a horrifying answer that he is still fixing the problems and when questioned deeply, got the terror answer that he did not start anything until date. Moreover, requesting me to wait for another 2 weeks.

I rejected his request and told him to arrange for cancellation deed and check, for the amount, and he rejected saying he will deduct rs.25 as per agreement. I initially rejected his check and told him I will collect the amount what ever after presenting the issue in front of consumers forum. Moreover, after short conversation he realized that I would make mess( i searched this property in internet and he also told me 70% of his customers are thru internet) if the total amount were not refunded. So guys please be aware and do a lot of background checking before investing your hard earned money.

Vultures are all around us in the form of builders, relaters and especially mediates or brokers or agents or what ever it is… (via)

Background Check of Builders before you purchase Property

It would not be fair to say that one should avoid small builders, but one has to be more cautious with the small builders compared to bigger ones. Here are the 5 things one should always check before they deal with a builder – small or big. This checklist will make sure that your pain is reduced later and the chances of getting in trouble will be minimised.

1. Enquire about their previously Completed Projects

You should always ask them directly about the previous projects they have completed. Better visit them too, and ask the locals and people living there about delays if any and the issues they faced. You should also search about those projects on internet and watch out for any grievances and complaints.

2. Check if they are part of some builders association

There are few associations and groups for builders community and there are codes of conduct defined for builders. Some of those associations are “Builders’ Association of India” (BAI) and “Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India” (CREDAI). Its always a good idea to watch out if the builder you are dealing with is a part of those associations or not. While you can’t say that not being a member is always a wrong thing, but you can always ask him why he is not a member. I would say a builder who is part of those association would be more serious and professional compared to other small time builder.

3. Check the rules incase of Delay or Cancellation of Project

You should always ask for the rules and terms and condition which will apply incase of delay or cancellation of the project. Ask them for an agreement copy even before paying the booking amount. Do not get too impulsive with the project and hurry. Watch “Compensation clause” which talks about the compensation paid to the buyer in case of any issues.

4. Search on internet for his review and past

Always do a thorough research about the builder and his quality of work on internet and different forums. While in general all the builders have some or the other bad reviews from someone, watch out that the internet should not be filled with bad reviews totally! In case you do not find any information or very little information about the builder, then you are mostly dealing with some new guy in town, who might be truly unprofessional. Avoid it.

Do you know someone who had dealt with small builder and was stuck with the situation or faced any issue? This can even happen with big builders. Share your experiences in comments section…

How Multi Level Marketing (MLM) schemes with Pyramid Structure works ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Today we are going to talk about MLM or Multi Level Marketing Schemes which have a pyramid kind of model. For years and decades, these kind of schemes are active and a lot of people get trapped in these Pyramid Schemes and lose their hard earned money. In this article, we will see the common mechanism they work on and their characteristics. We will also create a dummy Pyramid scheme to show you the traps & pitfalls. Before we move ahead, get this fact that we are talking about those pyramid schemes which also have different levels of people one on top of other and where one guy pays money which gets passed on as reward to another.

Multi Level Marketing Plans

How Multi Level Marketing schemes work?

Multilevel marketing schemes are generally network based marketing schemes, in which a person has to add more people under him. The people obviously pay some money to “join” the business and then they add more people under them. In almost all the schemes, the person is incentivized for adding more people under them.

You all must have heard about the AMWAY business model, which is nothing, but a great example of Multi Level Marketing, while the business is legitimate and there is no fraud in it, still it also falls under a pyramid model. Even I have attended its meetings once when I was novice child :). The business model looked so easy, just pay Rs 5,000 to join the business and then keep adding more people to “business” and you get some percentage from the entire sales under your Tree. There are various ranks like Silver, Gold , Diamond etc., and the higher your rank, the more you make. Lot of people make money in it through legal way, and more you work harder , the money you can earn, but the point is , people who get in early make more money and the people at bottom struggle a lot.

Why most people lose money in Fraud Pyramid Schemes?

Guess what?!  A lot of people make money in these Multi Level Marketing business models, and they become the ambassadors of the business. They flaunt the cheques and the money they make and believe me, some of them are real!. They really do make money and we will quickly see more on that, but the point is, that the majority of the people lose lot of money and struggle in these kind of get rich quick pyramid schemes. And that happens, because there is a limit to adding people. You can’t add more people in the tree after a certain point and when the tree becomes bigger, than it’s trouble point, it’s reaches a  kind of saturation level when the biggest chunk of people who are at bottom lose all the money. Here is an example graph which will give you a good idea of what I am talking about.

How MLM or Pyramid Scheme Works

Example of SpeakAsia

You must have heard about the latest craze called Speak Asia Online! I will really not be surprised if you tell me that you were part of it! I will not be even surprised if you tell me you made lot of money too! That might happen if you started earlier! Because then, the scam was still in the making! If you joined at the end, you were at the bottom of the tree you lost your money. This is how it worked!

A person can join SpeakAsia by paying Rs 11,000 and becomes a “panelist.” He then starts getting 2 surveys per week and getting Rs 500 for filling up each of them. That’s around Rs 4,000 per month and 48,000 per year and that was how Speakasia was promoted by its member to lure other members. This was at the start and though the amount of money  coming IN was less than the amount of money which went OUT, and the whole model was unsustainable in long run, it was definitely sustainable in short term. Just think about it! Is it not easy to pay 10 smaller bakras if 100 bigger bakras join the next batch?

And after all that, it crashed! But still there are innocent people out there who claim that it was genuine and it worked for them. They are not wrong! It really worked for them and they made money, but that was part of the game. They wanted you to make lots of money so that you can bring more people in and then one fine day when they make a really big pile money that they can just vanish! Poof!

Breaking Relationships !

The biggest other bad thing about these pyramid schemes are how the relationships become sour and messed up when the person who is part of MLM tries to add all their friends and relatives into the MLM, suddenly they start looking at humans as “targets” , Here is one incident which happened with Shantanu 

I know about this as I faced these offers couple of times from my very close friends and relatives. And I know how hard it was for me to tell them “I am not interested”. Those who is a very extrovert in nature and also convince people more, like insurance agents can get success. But most people are in the other side only. In fact one of relative faced very tough challenge later on when people found his scheme a scam. Anyway, I think after such articles also these schemes will come in future and again many will trap in them also.

In one other incident, one of the Fraud scheme called as “Japan Life” made someone lose his girlfriend

Long time back in 2000, my girlfriend got stuck up in a similar scheme called “Japan Life”. They used to take 80,000 Rs. and will give you a magnetic mattress. She tried to get me in as well and I was almost about to get trapped but sanity prevailed and I escaped, however since I did not join, I lost my girlfreind forever. I remember this fraud came up in Star News and I could see so many people getting cheated. This was around New Delhi and surrounding areas

Some other popular Multi Level Marketing and Pyramid businesses which were actually a scam were GoldQuest, StockGuru , UniPay2U etc etc (add more name in comments section if you are aware about them). Moneylife has also done this story on Multi Level Marketing companies in Forex trading, Have a look at it.

Jagoinvestor MLM Scheme – Lets create a SCAM Plan right now

Let me know you how simple it is to create a pyramid scheme and it will look so attractive . You all know I have written a Personal Finance Book called “Jagoinvestor – Change your Relationship with Money.”

Now here is a scheme

  • Pay Rs 1,000 and become a member of the scheme
  • You get the book FREE on signup
  • Make a person join the pyramid scheme and get Rs 250 for each person
  • You can add any number of people to this scheme

You realize that if you add 4 people to the group, you will get a 1,000 bucks and a Free Book! So it’s extremely easy for you if you join the scheme early.

Let’s say 10 people join under me.

Level 1 – Add 10 people

So 10 people will pay 1,000 each and I will make Rs 10,000 total , and I will send back a FREE book to all the 10 people. I incur Rs 5,000 expenses and make a cool profit of Rs 5,000.

Level 2 – Add 100 people 

Now let’s see… Each of these 10 people persuade 10 more people under them, and 100 more people join the scheme. They will pay Rs 1,000 each to me;, that means Rs 1,00,000. I will spend Rs 50,000 for the 100 books , and I will be left with Rs 50,000. But out of this 50,000, I need to give a share to each member at level 1, for 1 person the incentive is Rs 250 , so for 10 people, the incentive is Rs 2,500 for each person at level 1, and because there are 10 people at level 1, I will have to pay Rs 2,500 to each at level 1, and I will have to share 50% out of 50,000, that’s Rs 25,000. But I still keep Rs 25,000 with me.

So now you can see, I made a total 5,000 from 10 people at level 1 and Rs 25,000 from 100 people at level 2. And each of the 10 person at level 1 made cool 2,500 from 10 people they added under them, they not only recovered their 1,000 back, but also got extra Rs 1,500 and a FREE book! Wow! This business model is amazing!

Level 3 – Add 1000 people 

So the business is expanding and the word is spreading and my book ambassadors are in the market advertising this scheme and showing the kind of money they are making and the free book they get! Dude! They also have a valid cheque with them! No fraud! . So the word has spread like wildfire now and everyone wants to join this business.

Now, lets say each person at level 2 adds 10 more people under them again, because the word is spreading about this awesome business. There will be 1,000 people at level 3, paying 10 lacs to me and I will incur 5,00,000 expenses. I will pay 2,500 to each person at level 3,  that means 2.5 lacs in total, but I will still keep 2.5 lacs with me.

Level 4 + 5 + 6 

Can you see, how it’s growing? And how people are making money? From 1 person to 10 people, and from 10 to 100 and them from 100 to 1,000? But what next? Level 4? Level 5? Level?

When this reaches level 6 , there will be 10 lakh people under this scheme and they will be paying 100 crores to me! . You guys are going to hate me at that level! . Because you will never see me again! . Neither will I send any more books to anyone!, Nor will I send any share to anyone. I will just run away and you wont be able to trace me! . Any person who would have joined in at the start would find it easy to grow and spread the business. But people at bottom will just not be able to do anything, they are the last batch of fools!

Real Life Examples related to Fraud Schemes

Krishna shares

During my College days there were 2 such schemes ( 7000/- & 1200/- each) introduced to me by my friends & asked me to join them. I explained them that they are highly unsustainable by using simple exponential formula (2^e). But still they thought i am a fool & not making money out of this wonderful Golden “Pyramid”. Thanks to God for that!!!. I just want to say that “User Pure Maths” before entering or dealing with any thing with your hard earned money. Be on your foot not on air.

Sam shares

In 2007, one of my good friend called me when i was out of station. “Sam, i have something great to share with you, when are u coming back? i cant wait to meet you etc etc”. I was kinda surprised and was very curious what he is gonna talk about. He took me to this office where many others showed cheques explained business model, asked me to buy some product and become a member. People were so promising that they will help me , let me grow & earn lots of money and all.. It was ‘Gold Quest International’. That day i made the biggest mistake of my financial life. They made me buy some Gold & Silver coin for Rs.38000 rupees using my credit card. After i joined i tried to reach out to some people in my circle and most of them are already part of it & others are not interested. To pay this credit card bill, i had to take a small personal loan. It was the initial days when i got into job and all these incidents made my financial position worst.

Sachin Shares

I lost 20 K in this MLM bullshit … it was with the name Cossets in Delhi . They arranged a huge pomp show in Siri Fort to show off the happiness of the people who had made money and became millionaires. There were multiple stores in Delhi where u cud purchase if u were a member Then some Ex army also got fooled joined in and invested smthng like 4-5 Lakhs his life savings got duped and then he made a case on the company . Phew Cossets was like GAYAB.

Suhas Shares

My brother was a victim of it late in 2002 in scheme(scam) called netkhazana.He lost around 17k at that time.And from that time I have got recommendations from freinds(?) and relatives(?) in to hell lot of schemes but never got into any because of the first bitter expereince. I suppose this schemes are gr8 if you have selfless people involved but that does not happen as the corpus grows to crores of rupees and people at top tempt to cut the goose.

Other Models of Scam

There are many other multi level marketing scams, which are not in a pyramid model, but they ask for money for some awesome investment based on some logic and then they really give back awesome returns to handful of investors, who spread the word about the scheme and them more and more people join the investment scheme and once it becomes very big, the person who started that scheme vanishes. The Govt is going to take some tough measures on these kind of fraudulent schemes. Here is a nice video which explains more about this.

Beware of these Get Quick Rich models

There are a hell of a lot of schemes and businesses running which show promises of making awesome returns from gold, stock market, real estate and many other kind of investments. They mostly will look really attractive and credible, but always remember that if someone is offering you anything better than bank fixed deposits, there is no doubt that there is some of the other risk involved. The bigger the potential return, bigger the risk.

Disclaimer : Note that we have just discussed how Network Marketing works and the basic mechanism. There might be various businesses and models which are making money, and might be good. This article just wants to bring awareness among people on the concept of pyramid schemes and they fool and loot majority of people in our country .

If you come across any Business like this, first make sure you check that its a member of India Direct Selling Association, which kind of gives a legitimate name and also they follow certain code of ethics. If its not part of this, I would say better stay away from it. Amway is part of it. So, not all Multi level marketing models are fraud, a lot of them are genuine also. Here is what Sunil shares about this

A Multi Level Marketing is different from Direct selling. Any company selling directly to the customer, removing all the supply chain management commissions behind, will be governed by Indian direct selling association, http://www.idsa.co.in (within India) and world federation for direct selling association, http://www.wfdsa.org . There are many companies like Avon Cosmetics, Amway, Oriflame, Herbalife, Tupperware etc.. registered under these federations. These companies work under the ethics defined by the IDSA or WFDSA and are very harsh on the people who dont adhere to these ethics. Many people reading this article will agree that the quality of the products they produce are amongst the best in the world. Many people are under the impression that these companies are similar to the other ponzi schemes.

Let us know what do you think about the concept of Multi Level Marketing and associated businesses. What is the biggest reason you think people fall for them and get trapped?

CIBIL Score 2.0 – An Improved version of Credit Scoring

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

CIBIL has recently come up with Cibil Transunion Score 2.0 which it calls an improved version of the CIBIL Credit Score. This new Credit Score will help in a better identification of new borrowers (having credit history of less than 6 months) and help classify them into risky and not-risky categories.

More about CIBIL Score 2.0

The biggest change here is that the CIBIL Score 2.0 is for new borrowers who have a short credit history, i.e. 6 months. So now there will be two classes of borrowers

1. Less than 6 months of credit history 

Any borrower having less than 6 months of credit history earlier used to get a score of 0. But with CIBIL 2.0 , they will get a score in between 1 to 5, where 1 represents high risk of default and 5 denotes least risk of default. This score between 1-5 will depend on parameters like 90 days overdue in any given month (for last 24 months), credit seeking activity (number of loan enquiries you make), type of credit (secured or unsecured) and the demographic (age , location etc.)

This move is going to help a lot of people who are very new to credit and have recently taken credit cards or have taken some kind of loan and need another loan. There have been instances that due to their short credit tenure, they didn’t have any credit score and a lot of bank rejected their applications for loan just because they didnt have one.

2. More than 6 months of credit history 

For those who have more than 6 months of credit of any kind, for them the credit score will be in range of 300 to 900 score, just like earlier. However, it seems like this scoring method will consider only higher scores like 800+ as the better score. As per this firstpost article, it says that an old score of 751-800 will now be equivalent to something like 662-697 in the new score version .

For borrowers with more than six months of credit history, the old scoring criteria 300-900 remains, but for the lower score you get. For instance, the old score of 751-800 will be equal to 662-697 in the present one.

The newer version is initially made available only for CIBIL’s 862 member banks and financial institutions, after which it will be available for the customers as well, he said, without giving an exact timeline for the completion of the process.

Cibil Score 2.0 is a better Score

This new CIBIL score is said to be a better indicator of someone repayment capability. It has been designed keeping in mind the Indian market and the way consumer behavior is changing from last some years.

 “CIBIL TransUnion Score 2.0 predicts risk more powerfully as this scoring model has been customized for the changing Indian market and consumer behavior. This scoring model will enable banks to better identify good customers, thereby enabling them to provide credit to more consumers and increase credit penetration and financial inclusion in the country.”

– said Mr. Arun Thukral, Managing Director, CIBIL

The new CIBIL score is tested by the company old random data and it seems to identify the risky customers in a more better way. Here is a snapshot of results I found out on transunion website. You don’t really need to understand this graph, just get that this identifies risky customers in an improved manner.

Old vs New CIBIL Score 2.0

Now, The credit institutions that have adopted the new scoring model will decide on customer’s loan application based on this new score. So it would be interesting to watch out the credit score banks ask for giving loans .

What do you think about this new cibil score 2.0 and the changes which has taken place ?

We are happy to share that we have got a great response to our newly launched Jagoinvestor Wealth Club some days back . There are already 140 members and we are giving the discounted pricing to only 300 people . We are excited to share that we are moving towards our vision of creating a great dedicated closed community. Join the club if you feel you need to be present there.

How is interest on saving bank account is calculated ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

A lot of people do not know interest is calculated on their savings bank account.In this article I will explain all the aspects of interest on a savings bank account. Earlier all the banks had the same interest on their saving bank accounts, which was 4% , so a person had no choice in terms of interest rate, you would have got the same return with any bank. But, RBI has recently de-regulated interest on saving bank account and now banks can decide the interest they want to pay on saving bank. This has had a positive impact for customers, because now due to competition, banks like Kotak Bank and Yes Bank have started offering higher interest rates like 6% or 7% and using that parameter to attract lot of customers.

How is interest on saving bank is Calculated ?

Coming to the main question, the procedure to calculate saving bank interest, we will first see how it was done earlier and then we will see how its done now.

Old Method

Earlier, Banks used to pay 3.5% interest on the minimum balance between 10th and last day of the month. This was not a very customer friendly method because if you kept Rs 5,00,000 in your saving account for the whole month and on 26th, & let’s say you take out 4,90,000. You would have got interest only on Rs 10,000 @3.5% , which is just Rs 28.

New Method

Now a new method is used to calculate the interest on saving bank account which is very fair.  From April 1, 2010 , as per the RBI circular on new guidelines on saving bank interest calculation; this is the rule for interest calculation.

“The interest has to be calculated on daily basis for the closing day balance” – It’s that simple. So let’s say the interest rate is 4% , then you will get interest @4% on daily basis for your closing balance and it will get accumulated , but it will be paid back to your account only after 3 or 6 months. While RBI wants all the banks to pay the interest every quarter, each bank has its own criteria , like ICICI Bank pays it twice a year right now in Sept and March.

So now, if you see the same example we discussed above, with the new method of interest calculation, the interest will be 4% on 5 lacs (Rs 1,369) for 25 days (from start of month to 25th) and on 10,000 for next 5 days (Rs 5) (26th – 30th) . So the interest would be total Rs 1,374 . In the old method it was just Rs 28 . Can you see the gigantic difference?

Saving Bank Interest Calculation

High Interest on Saving bank from some banks

You must have seen some banks are now offering 6-7% of interest rate and they have dual interest rates, like 5.5% below 1 lac and 6% above 6% (in case of Kotak Bank) , which means that you will be getting 5.5% on the amount below 1 lac and only on the difference amount above 1 lac, you will get 6% interest . So if you have a balance of Rs 1,50,000 in your bank (lets say kotak bank) , you will get 5.5% on 1,00,000 and 6% on 50,000 .

You should be more interested in interest below 1 lac

If you see the average amount kept in saving bank account , it should not cross 1 lac for most of the people . While there are people who park their money in saving bank account for some time, but it does not happening with most people. So if some bank is giving higher interest for amounts above 1 lac, that’s a secondary benefit for you, not the basis of selection of bank. Because if you are anyways ready to keep a balance of more than 1 lac, why not just create a short term deposit online,which can be broken anyways or just activate your sweep in account option, so that an amount above a target amount automatically gets converted to FD and earn more money.

Do you now understand how interest on saving bank account is calculated? Will it help you manage your bank money in a better way?

Best Credit Card In India – Review of top 6 cards

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Most of the people who apply for a credit card in India, do not pay much attention at the time of taking the card, but later get frustrated by the card itself for various reasons high bad customer service, hidden charges, and several other factors. The obvious question then is, which is the best credit card in India? We did a survey on credit cards and tried to do a review of credit cards based on participants experiences. We will see how these cards rate in 6 important parameters. There were 654 participants who took the survey, hence you can safely assume that the collective responses will give a near reality results.

Best Credit card in India

If you see the chart above you will know that the 6 top credit cards in India are –

  • HDFC Bank Credit Card
  • ICICI Bank Credit Card
  • CitiBank Credit Card
  • SBI Bank Credit Card
  • Standard Chartered Credit Card
  • HSBC Credit Card

6 factors to look at before you apply for Credit Card In India

Let’s see those 6 parameters which you should look at before you apply for a credit card in India. At the end of this article, we will see the detailed results of the credit card survey and find out how different credit cards performed on each parameter so that if some particular parameter is more important for you, you can just pick a card based on that parameter.

1. The interest rate charged on credit cards

The first parameter to look at while choosing a credit card can be the interest rate charged by the credit card company. It can range from 1.99% on the cheapest credit card to as high as 3.5% per month on the most expensive credit card. For most of the people who pay their bills on time, this parameter will not matter much, but you never know when you might get into a debt trap kind of situation where you start using your credit card to the maximum limit and pay the interest per month, at that point of time this factor will really matter. Note that interest rate charged is mentioned on a per month basis, but a small difference of 1% can be very big, considering it on a yearly basis.

For example, a 1.99% monthly interest rate actually means 27% Yearly and 3.5% monthly means 51% yearly CAGR.

51% yearly CAGR ! … means your Rs 1 lac of credit card debt can actually increase to 7.9 lacs in just 5 yrs if you don’t do something about it and obviously you will run around to improve your CIBIL score later!

2. Annual Fees & Other charges

A lot of credit cards charge yearly fees and renewal fees (at the time of renewal). Now a lot of people hold a Free credit card for lifetime, but that’s just bunch of people who were given the credit card on a telemarketing call, mostly because they are working in some big company and chances are higher that their usage of credit card will be much higher than an average customer, hence the free credit card.

But, a lot of people apply for the credit card themselves and for them, there are yearly charges (annual fees) and another kind of charges which is applicable to everyone. For example, the penalty charges if you don’t pay your dues any due date. There are tons of customers who do not pay their dues on last time and just pay the minimum payment. If this happens a lot with you, then there is a great chance that you also live with the myth of minimum payments on credit cards. So apart from annual charges, there can be charges like

  • Charges when you pay your credit card bill by cash in any bank branch
  • If you make a demand draft from your credit card
  • If you request for a duplicate statement
  • And many other credit card charges .. the list is not a small one 🙂

Note that if your credit card is FREE as of now, it might carry annual charges when it expires and you apply for renewal – and credit card company says – “Sir, we gave it 100% free only till the card is valid, now its renewed! “

3. Rewards and Offers on Credit Card

There are a lot of advantages of using a credit card in the form of benefits and reward points. For example – You get PAYBACK points which you can use to redeem at various places like www.bookmyshow.com, and book movie tickets by redeeming those points. You also get cashback benefits if you use the card at selected HPCL petrol pumps and you don’t pay the fuel surcharge too.

There are many other kinds of benefits that many credit cards in India offer and those can be different from one credit card to another. This is one very important factor before you choose a credit card because a big number of people just take credit cards for these benefits and even if you are not looking for these, you might want it in the future at some point in time.

4. Customer Service and Transparency

Once I called my credit card company (which is ICICI Credit card) because I wanted to know if there will be any annual charges on my credit card as the expiry date is over and I wanted to renew the credit card. They gave me a very clear and satisfactory step by step answer which made me feel – “Great” .

There was no renewal charges and no annual charges even after renewal. So I was happy. Now it was not the FREE thing here which made me happy alone, It was the way customer care talked to me and treated me like a human:).

While there are instances when I was not that happy, but overall on average, I would still rate the customer service of my ICICI credit card as “good” . Well, that’s my experience only and others can have a bad or worse experience with the credit card company. Before you apply for a credit card, you need to look at this very critical aspect of customer service and how transparent are they overall.

5. Convenience to pay the bills

Something which you will deal with each month is the payment of your credit card bill. Now almost all the credit card companies allow paying by net-banking, cheque, cash and other ways. But still, some banks can be really torturing and not that supportive. It can be cumbersome at times. There have been instances when people paid by cheque before time and it was not processed on time and the person had to suffer because of that and had to run around to get back those charges reversed.

Here is the example

I got the CIR and there is absolutely no big hiccups except one in ICICI bank credit card (I had lot of issues with this bank and some late payments od 1-7 days in some credit cards in very few months. Never listens customer and pathetic customer care executives) of which the DPD is consistently not (000) good for last 5 months. But hey it wasn’t my fault. I dropped the cheque of overall due (about 12000/-) and they never bothered to inform me that my payment was not credited (god knows what they did with cheque). After 5 months when they made a balloon of charges and the whole amount jumped to 19000/- they called me and threatened me of CIBIL. I was never in the mood to not pay the due hence paid the whole amount 19000/- notified by them. Could this lead to this much low score?? – Link

Not to mention the unfair update on CIBIL report which affects you for years. So it’s a critical factor to look at before you apply for a credit card in India.

6. How easy was it to apply for credit card

Have you gone through a frustrating time applying for credit card, really had to run around to get a credit card even when you were totally eligible to get one. While this criterion is not that big, as its a one-time event still you can consider it before you apply for one. I recently had a hard time opening a saving account for my brother with ICICI bank because they had no way to accommodate people living on rent with friends, however, Kotak bank did it for me, at that point of time, the “ease of opening the account” was really a big thing for me. In the same way ease of applying for a credit card can be one important factor at times.

Best & Worst Credit Card in India as per Survey

Below are the results of the survey which we conducted on credit cards. Have a look at it.

Best Credit card in India

If you look at the above chart you will see that the best credit card in India turns out to be Citibank Credit Card and the second best is the HDFC Bank Credit card overall. However, this does not mean that other credit cards are not good at all the parameters. ICICI Bank credit card is very close to all the other cards in several parameters.

While the SBI Bank credit card and HDFC Bank credit card top the list when it comes to interest rates charged (means they have lower interest rates compared to others), but HSBC Bank credit card comes last. HBSC bank credit card has not done well in any parameter as per the survey and has the lowest ranking in all of them.

Average Credit Card bill for the last 6 months

86% of people are paying less than Rs 20,000 per month as there credit card bills, that’s last 6 months average. Whereas only 2% of people had more than Rs 50,000 bills per month. I suspect that these people must be using their credit card for various mandatory expenses which are required anyways. Lots of reward points and benefits to them:).

Best Credit card in India

Credit Card Reviews from participants

Ramakrishna says on his Citi IOC Card – I am using credit cards from past 9yrs. If u use the credit card in the right manner, u get the most out of it. And make sure you pay your outstanding amount before the due date. Most of the times, by end of month I am barely left with the liquid and credit cards used to save during that bad times and used to pay the outstanding by the due date. I never ended up paying any interest until now. The best credit card to date to my knowledge is Citi IOC card. I had made use of the rewards and offers at the extreme.

Kriprabha on Axis Gold Card – Very, very bad – due to careless service. 1) Not pointing out auto-debit facility – I missed one annual fee, so from 300/- bill went up to 1000+. 2) Not applying their own rules about marking a lien on my FD Receipt — my card was blocked for weeks and no one seemed to know this requirement, and they kept assuring me the card would be activated soon. As of now, the card is inactive – reason unknown. I am snipping up a card today – want to avoid AMC which they will apply happily! These bankers live and work in air-conditioned comfort which is possible due to high ABQ. I will soon terminate my “relationship” with them. I am a senior, living on savings, so these visits to the bank cost a lot in auto fares.

Raghavendra on HDFC Credit Card – Experience with HDFC Cards has been good. I have never looked at the interest option since I’ve always paid the outstanding amount by the due date. Was charged a penalty a couple of times when I paid the outstanding a couple of days after the due date ( had not even paid the minimum amount by the due date, owing to travel), but the same was reversed after a detailed email to HDFC Cards requesting for the same, in light of good payment track record except for the 2 instances. On the rewards front, HDFC Bank does not have a very good rewards scheme as compared to others. But customer service is excellent. They also have two billing cycles, one of the 25th and the other on the 5th and allow customers to choose any one of them. This is useful for those who already have a card and choose a second to make optimum usage and take advantage of the alternate billing cycles

Atri on HSBC Credit Cards – I am using HSBC gold credit card for more than the last 7 years. I always submitted payments in time and even insured the card purchases. It was as good at their services and also at the part of mine but I do not know why in their review they decided to cancel my card and stop their services to me. I even asked HSBC CUSTOMER representative but they could nor reply satisfactorily. I now feel I should have to get a credit card from the Public Sector Bank only and wasted my time and money. My message to all public is to use Bank Account / Credit Card only of Public Sector Banks like SBI, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India, etc. for a good governance in the nation. Thanks and Regards.

Some more data out of credit card survey

  • Only 10% of people had 4 or more credit cards
  • Around 42% of people had exactly 1 credit card with them
  • The average number of credit cards held by one person was 2.03

Other Credit Cards

Note that this survey is focusing on top 6 credit cards and their comparison with each other only, which came out as the result of the survey, but there are several other banks credit cards in market which can be considered, but due to small amount of feedback in the survey, it was not sufficient to conclude anything about them nor do any kind of review about these credit cards. Here is the list of those other credit cards

  • Axis Bank Credit Card
  • Amex Credit Card
  • Kotak Credit Card
  • Bank of India Credit Card
  • Indian-Bank Credit Card
  • Bank of Baroda Credit Card
  • IndusInd Credit Card
  • RBS Credit Card
  • Syndicate Credit Card
  • Andhra Credit Card
  • Canara Credit Card
  • Corporation Credit Card
  • PNB Credit Card
  • ABN Credit Card

Did this article help you in choosing the best credit card in India? Is there any other parameter to look at before you will apply for a credit card? Do you think this survey helped you in choosing a good credit card in India?

2 Credit Card Tips I learned from others

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you want to know some credit card tips which you can use in your life ? In all probability you must be holding a ICICI, HDFC or SBI Credit Card and must be wondering how to use it effectively ! .  Credit card is used by almost everyone now a days and utilizing a credit card features is an art -I would say. It needs discipline, attitude and the right mindset to be used. However I came across 2 very good credit card tips, which were discussed by few readers on the comments section and hence this article bring forth those tips and tricks to you. These following tips are really good, but only for those who want to really squeeze out the benefit of their credit cards and not for someone who likes to keep it simple. Let’s see those credit card tips:

Credit Card Tips 1 – Making short term Fixed Deposits

Most people know that by the end of the month, they will get a credit card bill and they will have to pay a good amount of money towards it. Now imagine this situation – You will most probably have a good amount of money in your savings bank account which you know would be utilized towards paying off the credit card bill and you make sure that the money stays with your account. You don’t spend it or invest it anywhere because it already has a purpose and it also improves your credit score and report

Now the simple tip here is, that just see how much is your average credit card bill each month. It can be 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 at times, but if you know that generally the maximum you get is around 20,000. Then instead of keeping that money in your bank account, you can just do a short term fixed deposits in that start of your billing period, so that instead of earning mere 4% in a saving bank account, it will earn some 7%. The idea is to create around 90 days of fixed deposit each month for your average credit card bill amount. So what will happen that from 3rd month, you will automatically get those FDs matured and you will have the money ready. I said 90 days so that the interest rates you get are better. I can see that my ICICI bank is giving 7% for 91 days deposit. If your bank provides good return in 30 days, better make 30 days deposits.

Important : Do this only if your bank provides the online facility of creating fixed deposits and you would like to get better interest for your money in short term along with eagerness to pay off your credit card debt in full every time. At time this can look like over optimization, but its up to you. Now if you like it, take it, else let it go. Thanks Suhas for this trick .

Credit Card Tips 2 – Have two credit card with different billing cycle

You can get the maximum credit of 55 days on a credit card if you make the purchase in the start of the billing cycle and have a grace period of 25 more days (30 + 25 = 55). But you can not always make big purchases in the start of the billing cycle to get maximum credit, a lot of people make this mistake because they do not understand minimum balance in credit cards . So in that case the tip is to have 2 credit cards with two different billing cycles preferably having a gap of 15 days between them, you can use one credit card for first 15 days of the month and another one in the  second half. So for example you can have credit card A which has billing cycle from 1st Apr to 30th May and another credit card B whose billing cycle is from 15th May to 14th June.

So this way you can use the credit card A in the first half of the month and B in the second half. Note that though this involves 2 cards and requires a little tracking , but it will really help someone who uses the credit card a lot and would like to get benefit of maximum credit period almost all the time. Thanks Vareen for the tip.

What do you think about these credit card tips? Are they over kill!

PPF Maturity rules for withdrawing your money

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you know what are the rules on PPF maturity if you want to withdraw your money ? Do you know that you can extend your PPF account a block of 5 yrs after it’s initial maturity of 15 yrs? A lot of people think that once the PPF maturity is over, they get a licence to withdraw the money at any point of time in what ever way they want, in the case of extension of PPF. Today let me highlight some important points that you should be clear about PPF withdrawal rule in case of extension and show you how to calculate your PPF maturity amount. To start with lets answer what Kailash Chandra asked me sometime back on his PPF

I had opened PPF account on 05/05/1995 and extended for 5 years. Now the balance is Rs.651000/- as on 30/04/2012 and want to withdrawal partly. What amount can I draw please intimate. (link)

Whats the answer?

Its 60% Surprised!… lets move on

Before we move forward, let me clear that Public Provident Fund or PPF is a life time account. One can extend it for next 5 yrs for infinite times, this means you can keep on extending it for another 5 yrs after the maturity is over. That would in a way makes it look like a 5 yrs closed fixed deposit earning you applicable interest rate with tax benefits and without any taxation involved, even having a partial withdrawal benefit 🙂  That’s one reason why you want to open your PPF account right now even if you don’t need it at the moment, so that the maturity is 15 yrs away from now. See it as a milestone!

PPF Maturity Rules

1. PPF extended without any further contribution

The first situation is when you want to continue your PPF account, but do not want to put any further money in it . In this case all you want to do is just leave your PPF account as it is and let it earn the interest on the account accumulated. Note that if you dont take any action for 1 yr after your PPF matures, this option is default and automatically activates. Note that once its considered as “extended without any further contribution”, then later you cant put any further subscription in it. Now you can only withdraw from the PPF account, but cannot invest any fresh money in it. Note that in this case, you can withdraw any amount from your Public Provident Fund account, there is no limit. You can withdraw 10%, 50% or 90% as there is no limit. The balance amount will keep on earning the interest further. However you can withdraw only once a year, not more than once. (Learn how PPF account interest is calculated)

Interesting Fact : Now as you know this,  can you see an interesting point here, this way PPF can be acting as a great Pension tool, where you can withdraw the interest part yearly once and then utilize it for full year. For example if a PPF account has 1 crore into it, and lets say the interest is 8% (just an example). You can withdraw 5 lacs out of the Public Provident Fund account and the remaining 95 lacs will earn 8% interest, which will be 7.4 lacs. This 7.4 lacs will be added back to 95 lacs and the total next year would be 102.4 lacs. This way one can keep on withdrawing some amount from it and let it grow too.

2. PPF extended with further contribution

In another option, you can choose to invest in your PPF account on regular basis even after extension. But this has to be done within 1 yr of PPF maturity (before the completion of 16 yrs in PPF). Note that in this case, you can only withdraw maximum 60% of your PPF amount in total within the entire 5 yrs block. Each year you can withdraw maximum once.

For example if your Public Provident Fund balance at maturity is Rs 1 crore. Then you can withdraw a total of maximum 60 lacs in entire 5 yr block. You can withdraw 20 lacs in first year, then 10 lacs in 2nd year and then 30 lacs in 4th year. But Once 60% is consumed , you cant touch any money further for the current block. Only when the 5 yrs are completed and new block of 5 yrs start, then your balance will be 40 lacs and then again the same rule applies. However note that at the start of a new 5 yr block, you can choose whether to continue the regular contribution or stop the contribution, like we discussed in point 1.

Important : If at the time of Public Provident Fund maturity , you will have the potential to invest more in your PPF account in coming years, then better invest more and more and only when its time to retire or when you cant contribute more, extend the PPF with “no further subscription” option.

Bank Officials have no idea about PPF Maturity Rules in detail

A lot of banks (SBI) and Post office officials have no idea about PPF rules in such a detail. They will tell you that it can be extended only 2 times and hence insist on closing your PPF account once 2 extensions happen after your PPF maturity. Tell them that you know what are the rules and also teach them.

Which is the best bank for Home Loan ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Taking a Home loan is a big task in itself and one of the biggest financial decisions. A home loan is the longest debt in our life. At times 10-20 yrs, which makes demands a long term commitment. Each month you have to pay your EMI, sometimes you have to prepay some part of home loan, sometimes you need some documents and visit the bank. There are numerous things to be done during taking the home loan and after taking the home loan, hence you should be very clear that which is the best bank for Home Loan. Without much confusion, it’s very clear that everyone wants to go with the bank which makes your life easy at the time of taking a home loan and even after that. So the biggest question on everyone’s mind is “Which is the best bank for a Home loan?”

Best Home Loan Bank in India

First thing first, you have to be very very clear that their cant is a single bank or loan institution which is perfect for everything and you will never face any issue with them. Also, there is no “best bank for Home Loan” which has always worked for everyone to date. But overall we can always pick some banks which have been better than others on different parameters. You can say that on a high level “Bank A” is better than “Bank B” and this is based on many loan takers’ experience over the years. So now in this article, we will try to understand the difference between different banks and how they differ with each other. We will also see a survey result done with the vast community of this blog and which bank they choose collectively as the best bank for a home loan.

Public Companies vs Pvt Companies

While researching on this topic, the first thing which came to my mind was “all banks are the same, everyone has a bad experience will all kinds of banks, whether PSU or private”. But we have to understand that while some people can have a bad experience with some banks, there are a positive experiences too and we have to see things from a very high level and not judge a bank just based on a handful of bad experiences. The first confusion which comes to any loan taker mind is “PSU bank or private bank?” and based on the experience here is the conclusion.

PSU Banks are good post-loan but not friendly at the time of taking the loan

Private banks are very fast and friendly at the time of disbursing the home loan, they will treat you like a king up-till the loan is disbursed, but once every formality is complete and your home loan is sanctioned, you are a trash to them! As they are extremely aggressive in the marketing of home loans, a lot of people fall for it, Private companies presentation and the way they approach you is good but only till you are not a home loan customer. A lot of times private companies make things easy for you and also bend some rules for home loans. the number of documents they need also is less compared to a PSU bank.

On the other hand, PSU banks are not that great at the start of home loan , their rules are very strict and stringent and they still operate  in the “sarkari” style, however, once your loan process is complete and things start, their afterlife is much easier compared to private banks. The overall handling is much professional and as per the process. In short, they don’t suck your blood every now and then as private companies do.

Private banks are first to raise the interest rates

On the interest rates increase and reduction side, its seen that private companies are first to raise the interest rates after the rate increase from the RBI side, but private banks hide somewhere when there is a time for reducing the interest rates. However, PSU banks are more transparent on this front and much less annoying than Private banks. Also private banks arbitrarily increase the pre-payment charges (  like from 2% to 3%) the conversion fees are also charged heavily if you want to move down to lower interest rates.

Also the changes of fraud at employees level in Private bank is much higher than PSU Banks. I can’t say that PSU banks are not into the bad game, but it’s much much higher in Private banks because of sales pressure and targets. There has been cases of forced selling of home insurance and also cross selling of ULIP’s and other financial products along with the home loan

Which is the best bank for Home loan in India?

Now there are millions of people who have taken home loan and there are various parameters on which a bank can be ranked like Processing time for a home loan, Transparency in whole process, Attitude towards the customer, Interest rates and pre-payment charges, online tracking of your home loan after disbursement. But there is no ranking of banks on all these parameters. However still you can rank a bank overall as good or bad in total. I ran a survey on this blog and got around 1504 participants to vote for the best bank for home loans and based on that we can judge which banks are more preferable and more trusted. Here are the results.

Best Bank for Home Loan in India (Survey Results)

Best Bank for Home Loan in India - SBI , HDFC or LIC

A good place to look for all the home loan related data (Click here)

Top 5 banks for Home Loan at the moment

If you see the survey above, you can clearly see that the top 5 banks for a home loan are SBI, HDFC, LIC Housing, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank and these 5 banks comprise 83% votes. While a big reason for this can be that these are big banks having a wide reach and has more customers and hence the results are a little biased. But at least you can see that out of 1504 people on this blog, 83% of them have a home loan from these 5 big banks, in which SBI tops the list.

1. SBI Bank

Based on the survey and overall reading’s done over the net and comments section of this blog. SBI bank seems to be the best bank for Home Loan. While SBI Bank still carries the hangover of Sarkari culture and they are strict in the overall process, which means you will have to run all over the bank and many times to get things done, but once the whole process is complete, maybe you will have a smooth experience overall. Things will be easy post home loan process if you need anythings from bank compared to other banks. For those who want to know why SBI is preferred, follow this thread

2. HDFC Bank

Overall HDFC bank seems to be have mixed reviews. Some people had a great experience and some had a very bad experience. HDFC Bank is overall recognized as the bank for the home loan itself. But overall the experience was very very mixed.

3. LIC Housing Finance

LIC housing finance seems to be a decent option after SBI. While they are not that great as SBI, still they seem to be a good choice after HDFC and ICICI bank. LIC Housing Finance has lesser documentation requirements, but one has to run around for smaller details.  LIC seems to offer better rates and also giving the option to fix the interest rate for 5 years. One thing which many people do not know is that LIC reduces the interest rates for home loan for its customers having any insurance/investment policy with LIC by at least 0.25 %, but only if Sum assured of all policies collectively is more than 15,00,000 and all policies should be under the name of the loan applicant.

4. ICICI Bank

ICICI Bank seems to be very very fast and too friendly at the time of loan processing, but once the loan is done, life seems to be hell for most of the people. They are not very supportive most of the times and one gets too frustrated with their attitude. Overall their interest rates are also very high.

5. Axis Bank

Axis Bank is another good option as a big bank. One good thing about Axis bank is that they have NIL charges for any pre-payment. It’s a big surprise that Axis bank was more preferred than ICICI bank overall in the survey. While Axis Bank has few good options, there was one recent case from axis bank which I had highlighted on this blog on how they forced sell a life insurance policy along with home loan, While this was a negative thing from Axis Bank,  we have to understand that good and bad experience are part of all the banks.

So what is the final answer ?

While there are positive and negative experiences from different banks, the clear answer coming out of different comments from readers and survey is that if one has to choose just one name, SBI bank is the best bank for home loans. We have seen most of the votes going to SBI Bank and all the pointers are suggesting that its the right choice.

Which bank do you have home loan with and what was your experience overall from start till the end. Can you share it in for others benefit?

10 hidden EPF Rules which will blow your mind

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

We will discuss few EPF rules today. A small part of your salary (12% of your basic salary) is invested in something called EPF or Employee Provident Fund and an equal amount is matched by your employer each month.

This is what 95% of people know, but there are many things which a lot of people don’t know and this article is going to open some not known secrets about EPF rules. So let’s take them one by one in point’s format.

10 hidden EPF Rules

1: You can also nominate someone for your EPF

Do you know that there is also a “nomination” facility in EPF? The nominee will be contacted at the time of death of the person and handed over the money from the provided fund. However, if the nomination is not present (which you should check), it can rise to all sorts of issues while claiming the money.

There is a form called Form 2 which has to be filled to change or update the nomination. Please contact your company finance department or directly send the form to the EPFO department.

2: One can get pension under EPF

Do you know that there is something called EPS (Employee Pension Scheme) in the provident fund? The EPF part is actually for your provided fund and EPS is for your pension.

The 12% contribution made by you from your salary goes into your EPF fully, but the 12% contribution which your employer makes, out of that 8.33% actually goes in EPS (subject to a maximum of Rs 1250) and the rest goes into EPF. To understand it this way, a part of your employer contribution actually makes up your pension corpus.

But there are some caveats to this.

  • One is liable for pension only if one has completed the age of 58.
  • One is liable for pension only if he has completed 10 yrs of service (in case of more than one companies, the EPF should have been transferred, not withdrawn)
  • The minimum Pension per month is Rs 1,000
  • The maximum Pension per month is subject to a maximum of Rs 3,250 per month.
  • Lifelong pension is available to the member and upon his death members of the family are entitled to the pension.

EPF & EPS components

3: No interest is given on EPS (pension part)

You must be thinking that you regularly get compound interest each year on your contribution + employer contribution. But it does not work like that. The compound interest is provided only on the EPF part.

The EPS part (8.33% out of 12% contribution from your employer or Rs 1250 whatever is minimum) does not get any interest. At the time of PF withdrawal, you get both EPF and EPS.

4: You might not get 100% of your Provident Fund money

Imagine your contribution + employer contribution has been a total Rs 3,50,000 to date. Out of this 3,50,000 , suppose 2,50,000 has gone in EPF , and rest 1,00,000 has gone in EPS (for pension) . Now if you quit your job in the 6th year of employment and opt for withdrawal of your Provided Fund money (EPF + EPS actually), then do you think you will get a total of 3,50,000. NO!

That’s because you always get 100% of your EPF part, but for EPS there is a separate rule.

There is something called Table ‘D’, under which its mentioned how much you get at the time of exit from your job, there is a slab for each completed year and you get n times of your last drawn salary (depending on the completed year of service) subject to maximum to Rs 15,000 per month.

So if your salary, in this case, was Rs 30,000 per month, still you will be given only 15,000 * 6.40 = Rs 96,000.

Table D under EPS

Note that the table D is up to 9 yrs only, because if 10 yrs are crossed, then you are liable for a pension.

5: You can invest more in Provident Fund, its called VPF

You can always invest more than 12% of your basic salary in Employee Provident Fund which is called VPF (Voluntary Provident Fund). In this case, the excess amount will be invested in PF and you will keep on getting the interest, but the employer is not supposed to match your contribution. He will just invest up to a maximum of 12% of your basic, not more than that.

6: Withdrawing of EPF amount at job change is illegal

Almost everyone thinks that withdrawing of your Employee Provident Fund amount after a job switch is totally fine and allowed, however as per the EPF Rules, it’s illegal.

You can only withdraw your Employee provident fund money, only if you have no job at the time of withdrawing your money and if 2 months have passed. The only transfer is allowed in case you get a new job and you switch to it.

While there are no cases where EPF office tracks these things and takes up this matter, still just for your information you should know that if you got a new job and took it and then you are applying for withdrawal, it’s illegal as per law.

What in the case of EPS?

In the case of EPS, if the service period is less than 10 years, you have the option to either withdraw your corpus or get it transferred by obtaining a ‘Scheme Certificate’. Once, the service period crosses 10 years, the withdrawal option ceases.

Just for your information, you can withdraw your EPF money without the help of past employer signature by attesting your withdrawal form by a bank manager or some gazetted officer. I hope you are clear about EPF withdrawal rules.

7: One can opt-out of EPF if he wants

Yes!. I know this might be a surprising fact for many, but if one’s basic salary per month is more than Rs 15,000, he has an option to opt-out of PF and not be part of it. In which case he will get all his salary in hand (without anything deducted every month).

But the sad part is that one has to opt-out of Provident Fund at the start of his job. If a person has been part of EPF even once in his life, then he can’t opt-out of it. So if you have already had EPF in your life.

This option is not for you, but if you are new to the job and your PF account number still does not exist, you can tell your employer that you don’t want to be part of Employee provident fund. You will have to fill up form 11 for this.

8: Your EPF gives you some life insurance too

A lot of people might not know that in case a company is not providing group life insurance cover to its employees, in that case, the employee is given a small life cover through EPF. This is because there is something called Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI) scheme and your organization has to contribute 0.5% of your monthly basic pay, capped at Rs 15,000, as premium for your life cover.

However, companies that already have life insurance benefits to employees as part of the company, are exempted from this EDLI scheme. The bad part of this EDLI scheme is that the life cover under this option is very low and that’s the maximum amount of Rs. 60,000. While this is peanuts for most of the people in big cities.

For employees in small scale industries and small cities, this amount of Rs 60,000 will still count something.

9: You can use EPF money can be withdrawn at special occasions

So now you know that EPF withdrawal is not permitted if you are still working. But there are occasions when Employee provident fund withdrawal is allowed.

While you cannot withdraw it fully, you can withdraw a partial amount. Following is a list of events when you can withdraw the Provident Fund amount and the conditions you need to fulfill

1. Marriage or education of self, children or siblings

– You should have completed a minimum of seven years of service.
– The maximum amount you can draw is 50% of your contribution
– You can avail of it three times in your working life.
– You will have to submit the wedding invite or a certified copy of the fee payable.

2. Medical treatment for Self or family (spouse, children, dependent parents)

– For major surgical operations or for TB, leprosy, paralysis, cancer, mental or heart ailments
– The maximum amount you can draw is 6 times your salary
– You must show proof of hospitalization for one month or more with leave certificate for that period from your employer.

3. Repay a housing loan for a house in the name of self, spouse or owned jointly

– You should have completed at least 10 years of service.
– You are eligible to withdraw an amount that is up to 36 times your wages.

4. Alterations/repairs to an existing home for a house in the name of self, spouse or jointly

– You need a minimum service of five years (10 years for repairs) after the house was built/bought.
– You can draw up to 12 times the wages, only once.

5. Construction or purchase of a house or flat/site or plot for self or spouse or joint ownership

– You should have completed at least five years of service.
– The maximum amount you can avail of is 36 times your wages. To buy a site or plot, the amount is 24 times your salary.
– It can be avail of it just once during the entire service.

10: You can file an RTI application for EPF issues

Did you know that you can file an RTI applicable to get any kind of information regarding your EPF? You can file it if you are facing issues like no clarity about EPF balance, no action taken for your EPF withdrawal or transfer. To find out information about other issues on the Provident Fund. I have done a detailed post on how to file an RTI for your EPF issue.

Watch this video to know how to file RTI for EPF withdrawal or transfer issues:

UPDATES

  • In the recent budget 2015, the govt has made it clear that now an employee can choose between EPF and NPS. The employer will have to give this option.
  • Now the new system of UAN is in place for EPF, which has made a lot of things more simpler

Conclusion on EPF rules

The overall Employee provident fund rules are too complicated and very old. A common man does not know all these EPF rules, but knowing these minimum 10 EPF rules will help him in his financial life.