Tag: Life Insurance

There are so many LIC policies with different names ? For example – LIC Jeevan Saral , Jeevan Anand , Jeevan Tarang and many more LIC policies. So almost every person in India holds some LIC policies, but majority of them do not know how these LIC policies works ?

How LIC Policies Work ?

Most of the investors just take things for granted and keep dragging the policies assuming it would be the best thing in their financial life. In this article I will show you how Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) policies work and talk about few aspects like LIC bonus, LIC premiums and different other aspects which will help you in understanding how these policies work.

Moneyback Plans or Non-Moneyback Plans

A lot of LIC policies pay you on a periodic basis like at the end of 4th, 8th and 12th year, and then finally at the end of the maturity period. These policies are Money back policies, the example can be LIC Jeevan Surabhi or LIC Komal Jeevan. A lot people get attracted to these moneyback plans because they get money “many” times in between and it looks attractive to them, but the premiums are generally higher for these policies.

Then there are LIC policies which do not pay you back periodically but only pays you at the end of the maturity period. They are generally termed as normal Endowment plans. Some examples are Jeevan Anand and Jeevan Tarang

LIC Bonus & Additions to your Policy

The biggest confusion I see is generally in Bonus by LIC. One thing which investors in these policies don’t know and don’t care for to find out is that there are different kinds of bonuses in LIC policies and they are calculated differently. Let’s see them one by one.

1. Simple Reversionary Bonuses

Generally when we say “Bonus”, it is this “Simple Reversionary Bonus”, which is declared per thousand of the Sum Assured on annual basis at the end of each financial year. This bonus is declared today, but is paid at the end of maturity period only or on death, whichever is earlier. So for example if you hold a policy of Rs 10,00,000 Sum assured and the bonus for this year is Rs 60 per thousand sum assured, then your bonus amount is Rs 60,000 for this year, but you will only get it at maturity (after many many years) or on death, but by then it’s worth would be much lesser than today (this 60,000 today and 60,000 after 20 yrs).

A very important point to note here is that, if you surrender the policy, you don’t get the actual accrued bonus because it’s the future value, you will only get its reduced amount in today’s term and its very less. Also note that you are eligible to get reduced Accrued Bonus only if your policy has completed 5 premium paying terms. (This thread on our forum discusses Jeevan Anand in good detail)

2) Final Additional Bonus (FAB)

There is another kind of bonus in LIC which is generally called as “FAB” or Final Additional Bonus and it’s paid to those policies which are of a longer duration and has run for more than 15 yrs (The premiums are paid for all 15 yrs). This is generally a token of appreciation for being with the policy for long duration. The FAB is generally not paid for policies which have “Guaranteed Additions” (explained below). Here is an indicative list of FAB.

3. Loyalty Additions

This is again a bonus which is declared for being loyal to the LIC and completing a longer tenure. Generally it’s declared at the end of the policy, but for some policies it might be applicable after completion of 5 or 10 yrs. For example – In Jeevan Saral, the policy holders will earn such additions after a minimum of ten policy years have been completed.  This is usually an amount declared per thousand of sum assured depending on the corporation’s performance. Loyalty additions are totally non-guaranteed.

4. Guaranteed Additions

For a lot of LIC policies there is a term mentioned like “Guaranteed Additions”. These are assured sums which are given to policyholders for a specific period at start or end of some event along with the sum assured at the end of the term. Like for example, , Jeevan Shree-1 policy provides for the Guaranteed Additions at the rate of Rs. 50/- per thousand Sum Assured for each completed year for first five years of the policy. The Guaranteed Additions are payable along with the Basic Sum Assured at the time of claim.

Surrender Value

Most of the people who buy any Traditional Policies from LIC or any pvt companies’ don’t think a bit about terms and conditions on exiting the policy much before maturity. A general assumption is that they will at least get their paid premiums back with sum interest. I have seen so many cases like that where people are literally shocked to hear that they will get peanuts or nothing from their policy if they choose not to continue the policy. Surrendering of the policy works this way –

After 3 yrs, if you surrender your LIC policy, still you will only get a small fraction of your total paid premiums that too excluding first year premiums. So suppose you have a policy which has Sum assured of 10,00,000 for 20 yrs term with Rs 50,000 premium per year. If you have decided to surrender your policy after paying 5 premiums (you paid 2,50,000 in 5 yrs i.e. Rs 50,000 each year), then you will get around 30%-40% of 4 premiums paid (first year premiums are excluded), hence the total would work out to be only Rs 60,000 – Rs 80,000 only + proportionately reduced amount of accrued bonus if any (only because you completed 5 yrs, else you will not get this also).

A very important point to Note : A lot of people do not like to close their LIC policies after paying for 1-2 premiums because they will not get anything back for the 1-2 premiums already paid. They think that they will surrender the policy after completing 3 yrs, so that they will get at least something back. This is total emotional decision and not mathematical, because if you do maths you will see that surrendering the policy after 3 yrs is the worst decision if you have already realised that you should not continue with the policy. For example, if you are paying Rs 10,000 premium per year and completed 2 yrs, you paid Rs 20,000, If you close this policy now, you will lose all money (Rs 20,000), but you can save Rs 10,000 as third premium. If you choose to complete 3 yrs and then surrender, then you have paid Rs 30,000 and you will get back 30% of 2 premiums (first year premium not included), so you get back Rs 7,000 (loss of 23,000 as you paid 30,000 and got back 7,000). Do the math if you completed 1 yr only yourself, its more worst!

Note that surrender value is nothing but your future maturity value reduced to today’s value, so if the maturity value is Rs 10,000 after 20 yrs and if you want it before LIC will pay you the Net present value as per today’s term.

Paid up Policy

A lot of times when you have completed 3 yrs of policy, you might not want to get your money back immediately, in which case you can made your policy paid up (just stop paying premium and it becomes Paid up). When you do this, you can stop paying further premiums but you will get your total premiums paid + accrued bonus any at the end of the maturity period. This might work out better sometimes compared to surrendering if you were going to invest the proceeds in some debt instrument.

What are mortality charges

A lot of agents advertise these policies under the head “Free Insurance Cover“, But all the policies charge premium or charges for providing Insurance cover and it’s called “Mortality Charges”, these are the same charges which are there in Term plans and ULIP’s, but may be in a different way, so nothing is free, some part of premium goes in covering you and rest of it is invested in Debt instruments which can give you assured returns at the end of the maturity.

Loan on LIC Policy

You can also get loans at the time of crisis on your LIC policies, but the maximum loan amount available under the policy is 90% of the Surrender Value of the policy (85% in case of paid up policies) including cash value of bonus. The rate of interest charged on loans is at 9% to be paid half-yearly. Is there any other terms and conditions which you dont understand in your LIC policies ? We can all help you understand it in comments section .

Are you looking for surrendering your LIC Policies ?

By now you must have got a good understanding of your LIC policies and how they work. You can find out the return of your policies using the IRR method taught in this article. If you feel that you want to continue your Policies then well and good. But if you feel that you want to close your policies, do it soon because delaying the decision will cost you a lot in long run. I hope its clear to you how your LIC policy works for you .

Update : As pointed by Ranjan, there was a mistake in the analysis about the paying term of the policy, I have corrected it now. Please re-read the analysis.

If you like the article : Stumble it and Buzz it

Today we will talk about the market product “Jeevan Varsha”, If you are a regular reader of this blog, by now you must have gained enough knowledge on how to evaluate a product like this, if not then go ahead and see.

JEEVAN VARSHA

You can see the features in detail here . Mainly there are 2 things .

Survival Benefits

• 10% of the Sum Assured is payable at the end of 3 years.
• 20% of the Sum Assured is payable at the end of 6 years.
• 30% of the Sum Assured is payable at the end of 9 years
• 40% of the Sum Assured is payable together with Guaranteed Additions, and Loyalty Addition, if any, at the end of 12 years.

Guaranteed Addition

The policy provides for Guaranteed Addition at the following rates

• Rs. 65 per thousand Sum Assured per year for a policy of 9 years term.
• Rs. 70 per thousand Sum Assured per year for a policy of 12 years term

We will analyse the policy for 12 yrs here . We will talk about two things using an example.

1. Returns from this Policy at the End

2. Can we do better than this policy with same amount of premium [ you know we can 😉 ]

Example : Lets take an example of a person 30 yrs, who takes this policy for Rs 5 Lacs and wants to make yearly payment.

Tenure of Policy : 12 yrs
Tenure of Payments : 9 yrs
Sum Assured (SA) : Rs 5 Lacs
Premium : Rs 78500 (calculated adjusting Mode rebate and High Sum assured Rebate)

Method of calculation of Premium

Total Annual premium for 30 yrs old for 12 yrs policy = 165.30
Mode Rebate of 2%
High Sum Assured rebate of Rs.5 .

So Total premium = (500000/1000)*(165.3 – 5) * .98 = 78547.0 (So i took it approx 78500 .

In Case of Survival , he will get

In 3rd Year : Rs.50,000 (10% of SA)
In 6th Year : Rs 1,00,000 (20%)
In 9th Year : Rs 1,50,000 (30%)
In 12 Year : Rs 6,20,000 [2,00,000 (40%) + 4,20,000 (70 for per 1000 for 12 yrs , 70 * 12 * 5,00,000/1000 ]
Returns from this Policy at the End

Now how do we calculate the returns from this policy for this person. There are two way (Models) of doing this . One way is that we can just add the amount of money he receives from the policy and see how much total money he gets at the end of 12th year.

The other way is to assume that he is investing his money (which he gets at 3rd , 6th and 9th) year somewhere , so that he can get it at the end of 12th year (this way is a better way of calculating) .

First Model : Amount is just added

Total Sum received = 50,000 + 1,00,000 + 1,50,000 + 6,20,000
= 9,20,000

Second Model :

Amount received is invested @8% such that he recives it at 12th yr . (for 9 yrs , 6yrs and 3 yrs)

50,000 after 9 yrs : 99950 [ 50,000 * (1.08)^ 9 ]
1,00,000 after 6 yrs : 158687 [ 1,00,000 * (1.08)^ 6 ]
1,50,000 after 9 yrs : 188,957 [ 1,50,000 * (1.08)^ 3 ]
6,20,000 : 6,20,000

Total = 99950 + 158687 + 188,957 + 620000
= 10,67,594

We have not consider Loyalty additions and lets us see what are the reasons?

Bonus’s and Loyalty additions are not guaranteed and thats the reason you cant claim it as entitlements. These components are not backed by the sovereign guarantee that extends to the sum assured and guaranteed additions components.

In the (unlikely) event of Company going insolvent, you’ll only be entitled to the sum assured, at the time of death or on maturity, and the guaranteed additions thereon.

This applies to any Insurance company with products giving Loyalty Bonus as one of the components.

Now lets calculate the CAGR return from this policy, We have to use annuity formula for it for 9 yrs and then simple compound interest formula for 3 yrs. The formula would be
A = [ annuity part for 9 yrs] * [compound interest part 3 yrs ]

A = [ P * [{(1+i)^9 – 1 }/i] * (1+i) ] * (1+i)^3, where

A = Total money he accumulated till now .
P = yearly Premium (78,500)
i = CAGR return which we want to find out .

What have we done here?

The person we have calculated annuity returns for first 9 yrs (because he is making the payments for 9 yrs), then he does not pay anything for 3 yrs, so we have calculated compound interest for next 3 yrs. It may be a bit complicated to understand i know.

So

For First Model

The value of i which satisfies this equation is 3.3%, Yes you read correct. But this is not a good way of seeing things, so lets look at Second Model.

>>> (78500 * (1+.033) * ((1+.033)**9 – 1)/.033)*(1+.033)**3
919262

For Second Model

The value of i which satisfies this equation is 5.1% . This is the true representative of returns .

>>> (78500 * (1+.051) * ((1+.051)**9 – 1)/.051)*(1+.051)**3
1060497.7183573653

thanks to “Raja” for correcting my calculation

Which model is more better?

So lets take the Second model as the standard model for evaluation, So we conclude that returns from this policy would be around 5.1% considering

Consumer is smart enough to invest the proceeds again into some debt product using which he can get 8% returns .

Note that this return is considering there is no Loyalty Additions because they were not assured.

Total payment in 12 yrs was 12 * 79,000 = 9.48 lacs and at the end of 12 yrs he gets

9.2 Lacs (First model , 50k , 1 lacs , 1.5 lacs and 6.2 lacs, not reinvestment)

OR

11.78 Lacs (If proceeds are reinvested)

Some policy lovers would argue i am not considering Insurance and tax benefit part.

Regarding Tax benefit : We will compare this product with PPF, Mutual funds and Term Insurance and they also have 80C benefit with them, so tax benefit is something common with all, so there is nothing special with this policy regarding Tax benefits. For Insurance I will cover it in next part which we will discuss.

Can we do better than this policy with same amount of premium

Let us first understand the Insurance part.

The sum Assured is 5 lacs, so if a person dies before 3 yrs, he gets 5 lacs, if he dies after 3rd yr, he will also get the Guaranteed additions. So the maximum a person can get by dying is in 12 yr, in that case he will get 9,20,000 (50k, 1 lacs, 1.5 lacs, 2 lacs + 4.2 lacs GA, No loyalty additions in this case).

So lets be graceful and say that this person will get 9.2 lacs in case he dies.

The first thing to note here is Insurance cover, I don’t know what will happen to the family of this person if they get 9.2 lacs as Insurance money. If a person has the ability to pay 78,500 per Annam as premium, a wild guess for his Insurance cover is around 30-35 lacs at least. So the Insurance cover is not enough

Now lets see, what I recommend for this person who pays 78,500 per year to take care of his Insurance of 9.2 lacs.

So a person who pays 78,500 per year, can divide his 78,500 yearly payment into two parts, For insurance and Investment separately. You know what i would suggest, its simple Term Insurance and Investment in PPF or MF’s

Read Importance of Insurance (Term Insurance)
Read about Mutual funds and how to choose them

Let us first take care of his Insurance part, though he is covered of max 9.2 lacs just for 12 yrs, we are not that uncaring in nature to under-insure him, we understand importance of Insurance and his Family needs and the tenure of cover should be 25-30 yrs, not just 12 yrs, His Insurance requirement is around 30-40 lacs and we will provide it anyhow, even if the investments are to be compromised .

So we will try to provide him 35 lacs cover for 30 yrs.

For Defensive Investor

Insurance

Term Insurance of 35 lacs for 30 yrs : Rs 9,600 (Aegon Religare)

Investments

So he is left with 68,900 (78,500 – 9,600), for his investments. If he invests this in PPF (though there is limit of 70,000, lets assume he can do it). he will get around 14.12 lacs (annuity formula) at the end of 12th year.

He can then take out 1.73 lacs out of this to fund for his Insurance premium for next 18 yrs left, still the amount left would be better than the Jeevan Varsha. The other alternative is to keep the money in some Fixed Deposit and keep using the interest amount to fund Insurance premium for next 18 yrs.

There can be other ways of doing it, but the main point is that we have done better than Jeevan Varsha in all respects.

This investor can also use balanced funds for investments.

For Aggressive Investor

Insurance

Term Insurance of 35 lacs for 30 yrs : Rs 9,600 (Aegon Religare)

Investments

He can invest 68,900 yearly (5741 per month) left in Equity Diversified Mutual funds using SIP every money month in max 3-4 mutual funds.

He should expect to get around 12% compounded returns over 12 yrs , and your money should grow to 18.5 lacs (12% is again not guaranteed , its not based on Historical returns )

Summary and Notes

We have seen the policy from a broad level and see its main components, we have not seen small details, because they are not significant enough to change the views anyways. We have seen how its too complicated and provides returns which are less than what you can easily get in PPF.

Conclusion

Term Insurance + (MF or PPF) is a great combination, its easy to understand .The main this is to first Insurance your self Sufficiently and then think about investments.

That’s what i had to say for the day, don’t forget to recommend this blog to others so that they can also benefit. Also be sure to follow me on twitter here in case you are on twitter.

If you liked the article : Stumble it and Buzz it

Disclaimer : The views on this article are my personal. All the things discussed on this article are for learning purpose only. This blog will not be responsible for your investment decisions. There may be some mistakes while calculations, so please do your own calculations for taking any decisions. thanks

Few days back I had talked about “why an investor should avoid Jeevan Astha Policy”

But looks like Indians have developed unshakable belief and trust in these companies. Let us see some statistics about the policy.

A report from Economic times (Thursday, 22nd Jan 2009) says

“Collections for the policy which closed on Wednesday is expected to cross Rs.8,000 Crore. Some insiders say that collection could go even higher. Although the corporation had said that it targeted collections of Rs.25,000 Crore this was seen as a marketing gimmick not a real target.

– A sports person is understood to have put Rs.35 crores.
– A leading Film actor has invested Rs.8 Crores.
– A little known business family has invested Rs.50 Crores.
– Insiders day that over thousand of policies are over Rs.1 crore plus.

The policy has helped to bring LIC’s flagging mark ship back on the track and has enabled several offices in metro centers to achieve there targets for whole year.”

Despite the success the scheme has some limitations. Jeevan Astha is more of a bond and less of an insurance policy. Although the sum insured is five times the premium in its first year, the cover declines to 2 times in the second year. Smaller investor who were not all that savvy in reading the fine prints were mis-sold the policy promising returns of 10%.

My comments :

Goodwill and trust is the biggest thing, especially in country in India where people are not not much educated and can not take much informed decisions.

I can imagine SBI failing or running with public money, but not LIC (pun intended). That’s the kind of faith and trust in India. Which is fatal.

It may make sense for a filmstar or a sportsperson or a big business family to put there money in this kind of Policy, because there 10 crores will become 20 crores in 10 years (10 crores in 10 years is the return), and I am sure even if that is 7% CAGR return, its a good return for them as 10 crores is a big money. But we have to see it as a small investor point of view and goals.

A small investor who invests 10,000 or 50,000 in it and get double of his money after 10 years.

I am not sure if he is getting any return at all when you consider 6-7% of inflation. He is just getting his capital back with almost same purchasing power.

I come from a very small town in UP and I am sure that it represents India when you see per capital income, education level and living standard. And people there are not ready to hear anything other than LIC policies and FD’s of SBI or some other nationalized bank, will a small percentage having heard of Mutual funds or ULIPS even term insurance etc.

This is the story of India.

When millions of uninformed and unrealistic investors come together and put there small money together in these kind of polices, its bound to generate thousands of Crores of Rupees.

But I am sure of one thing, who ever invested in these kind of policies will get guaranteed returns, but I am not sure if he will get guaranteed and benefit for there investments when you take it for 10 yrs period. People investing there money in this policy are going to double there money in 10 years to buy something which will more than double in price in 10 years.

Fear is an excellent thing to take advantage of, when financial markets are down heavily and thing are looking bleak in short term, Anything with guaranteed “tag” will act like a magnet to hard earned money.

I am happy to not invest in anything like this and do not want my money to double in 10 years.

Jago Investor, ab to Jago !!!