Thursday, January 27, 2011

How to Select Right ULIP?

ULIPs are the most miss sold products in the Personal Finance domain. ULIP plans are revolutions for those who are looking for insurance and assured return on their insurance investments. These insurance products along with assured tax returns are also linked with tax benefits. The assured return on insurance investments has impressed many investors.


In the conventional Insurance products, the insurance component takes edge over the saving component, but in ULIPs insurance cover is secondary focus, while focusing mainly on return pert of your investment. ULIP offers opportunity for investor to select a product which matches their risk profile. Depending upon the risk factor of the investor he can select any ULIP product.


ULIPs are more like Mutual Funds, in term of their functioning, payment of premium and declaration of units in terms of NAV.


Whenever you are going for ULIPs, you should be well informed about ULIPs. ULIPs are most evolved investment avenues, and thus making well informed decisions is the key if you want to invest in ULIPs.
Read following tips which can be informative for your ULIP investments.


1. Understand ing ULIPsIn market there is a wide range of ULIPs available and which makes ot difficult for the investor to choose correct ULIP.Before investing in any ULIP try to get as much as information on ULIPs. Be aware of what product you are choosing for your investment.

Understand all the terms and conditions clearly before investing in ULIPs. You should try to gather information on ULIPs from various source of information including web, and print media information from Insurance companies.

2. Focus on your need and risk profileChoose a plan which focuses on your need and risk. Risk profile should be deciding factor in choosing a ULIP. Depending upon your risk profile you should go for ULIPs option which suits you better.

3. Comparing ULIPs from various companies:All the insurance companies offer many ULIPs, and ULIPs varies on parameters like expenses,premium payouts and performance etc. ULIPs work on premium payments as opposed to sum assured in the case of conventional insurance products.Before investing in any ULIP you should compare it on the basis if performance of ULIP. You should evaluate ULIPs on the basis of what's performance of debt, equity and balanced schemes and performance of various portfolios. Expenses play a major role in ULIP so an assessment on this parameter is also necessary.Make some enquire about the top-up facility offered by ULIPs i.e. additional lump sum investments which can be made to enhance the policy's savings portion. This way policyholders will be able to increase the premium amounts, thereby providing presenting an opportunity to gainfully invest any surplus funds available.

 4. Go for an experienced insurance advisorBefore doing any kind of major investments you should always select and financial advisor, who is having a through knowledge of insurance instruments. But make sure that the advisor who you are seeking is unbiased and independent; he should not be broker of some insurance company. You should also look for reviews of the financial advisor, from his previous clients and also check standards of his services.
It is very important that you should get a unbiased and independent advice on your ank kind of investments, so its always better to look for an advisor who asks for payments for his advice, because in that case, he will be working for your welfare not for the insurance company, whose products he will advice you. It is also very important that you should ask your advisor to provide you more services, rather than just filling and submitting the required forms.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Inflation on its northbound journey


After mellowing down in the month of November 2010 to 7.48%, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) jumped to 8.43% in December 2010. This sudden spurt in the headline inflation was due to the upward trend in prices of certain food and non-food items.

As per the official WPI data, prices of prices of primary articles; food, non-food articles and minerals shot up by 16.46% on an annual basis. Manufactured goods too became expensive by 4.46% on an annual basis. Also, during the month of December 2010 fuel and power prices scaled up by 11.19%.

Considering the northbound journey of the headline inflation, the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council's (PMEAC) Chairman said that the WPI for the fiscal ending March 2011 may end up higher at 7.00%. Also now the Finance Secretary - Mr. Ashok Chawla too expects the WPI for the fiscal ending March 2011 to be at 6.5%.
PersonalFN.com View:

We believe that the headline inflation would still remain above the comfort levels of the RBI, and is expected to remain stiff as the impact of spiralling food and crude oil prices would start creeping in the headline WPI inflation. As an effect of this we may see RBI increasing policy rates by 25 basis points in third quarter review of monetary policy 2010-11 (scheduled on January 25, 2011), despite the drop in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) to 2.7% (for the month of November 2010).

Friday, January 14, 2011

Your mutual fund investments at Risk!!

The recent multi-crore advertisement campaigns undertaken by some of the large mutual fund (MF) houses like HDFC Mutual Fund and Franklin Templeton Asset Management have raised several eyebrows on whether these companies are using investors' funds to boost their "brand equity".

Though these multi-crore ad campaigns are not illegal, they have raised ethical issues when the regulator - Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has been working to cut costs for investors, including banning of entry loads. And, it is noteworthy that all mutual fund schemes' advertisements go through the SEBI before going public.

Billboards and signs at traffic lights across Mumbai and Delhi that have sprung up display the companies prominently instead of individual funds, which normally is the case. One such advertisement reads - "choose a healthy investment-HDFC Mutual Fund SIP." The other - "Invest in Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund." At the bottom of the boards, one of their funds' name is written in a small font, the corpus from which possibly the cost of promotion is met.

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