Saturday, June 7, 2008

Tips on buying the right insurance

In India, insurance is broadly speaking divided into life and general insurance. insurance covers a family against the money implications of the death of the insured.

In addition, it's going to additionally offer bound survival edges, just in case the client survives the policy term. insurance policies square measure broadly speaking termed as "benefit policies".
General insurance could be a broad term encompassing protection in many areas like health (For some strange reason, it's not treated as a vicinity of the insurance sector), property, skilled liability among others. These square measure typically "non-benefit" covers. they're going to solely reimburse losses suffered and not confer any extra edges to the client.

Before deciding whether or not need|you need} insurance or not (although all folks actually require it in some kind or the other), take the subsequent into consideration:

The probability and impact of an event:

Assess the probability of an event and its financial impact on you, before zeroing in on a policy. Of course, an element of intuitiveness, is contained in the estimation but it is preferable to a random choice.
For instance, a shopowner in Mumbai can consider an earthquake as an event, which will occur infrequently but may still opt to insure against it, as the financial damage in case of an earthquake, could be significant.
Also, if the event occurs infrequently, the premium charged by an insurance company is also low. If an event occurs very frequently (like earthquakes in Japan), the premium will be high. Of course in the case of life insurance, although death is a certainty, the financial impact of death will vary with age, and the number of dependents.

Will I be adequately insured?

Merely having a cover is not enough. Take care to ensure that the cover is adequate for you. Too small a cover is virtually pointless, considering that it will not serve yours or your family's purpose.
Too much insurance will mean wastage of precious money towards payment of premiums. There are certain techniques to help you estimate the right quantum of cover.

Can I afford it?

We should take care that insurance premiums do not eat into a huge chunk of our income. This is especially important in case of long-term contracts such as life insurance. This may mean working backwards, and calculating the size of the cover, based on the premium afforded by you.
Beware of agents who try to hard sell you high-priced insurance covers, as they may be detrimental to your long-term finances.

Two of the most common mistakes committed by customers in the case of life insurance are:

Income tax-led decisions:


  • While contributions towards life insurance premium of up to Rs 100,000 can be reduced from "gross total income" under section 80 C, there is no need to be guided solely by this consideration. Also, do not wake up to the need for insurance only in the final quarter of the year.
  • By doing so, you're solely taking part in into the hands of agents United Nations agency can exploit your imperative ought to save tax and sell you policies that aren't very suited to your desires. Let tax saving be accompanying selecting a canopy, not the only force behind it.


Bundling insurance and investments:

Unfortunately, globally, over the years insurance product has been sold  additional as associate investment tool instead of a 'protection' vehicle. The nomenclatures modification (endowment policies, a refund policies, and unit-linked plans) however the underlying principle remains similar.

Agents usually reach their efforts because of the subsequent factors:


  • Providing rosy illustrations of future investment returns, handily side-stepping the fundamental question of whether or not the coverage quantity contained in this is adequate or not.
  • Stressing that associate insurance-cum-investment policy compels the policy holder to be disciplined in their savings program and this aids in semipermanent wealth creation.
  • Several studies have established that unbundling of the insurance and investment aspects cause higher overall results. after all this may need investment discipline on the a part of the client, however that's another story altogether.
  • I feel that except for insurance agents, customers too square measure answerable for the questionable mis-selling. Against this scenery, we are going to inspect specifics of various policies from consecutive article onward.

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