The ICICI Pru Life Insurance advertisement for their single premium ULIP called LifeLink Wealth SP promises multiple benefits by paying only once. To our mind, it hides much more that it reveals about their "unique" product.

For starters, the policy administration charges of Rs 60 per month for a single premium policy doesn't make any sense. Moreover, LIC's policy administration charges for their ULIP (Pension Plus) is only Rs 30/- pm. The premium allocation charge for LIC's Pension Plus single premium product is 3.3% while it is 5% for ICICI Pru LifeLink Wealth SP. Let's dig into the features of ICICI's single premium policy ICICI Pru LifeLink Wealth SP is a unique single premium  ULIP that promises an opportunity to enjoy potentially higher returns over the long term investments, with just a single premium. Download the brochure

This product also offers a unique "Trigger Portfolio" strategy that allows you to protect gains made through your funds invested in the equity markets from any future equity market volatility. For an investor, maintaining a pre-defined asset allocation is a dynamic process and is a function of constantly changing markets. The Trigger Portfolio Strategy enables you to take advantage of substantial equity market swings and invest on the principle of “buy low, sell high.”

Under this strategy, your investments will initially be distributed between two funds - Multi Cap Growth Fund, an equity oriented fund, and Income Fund, a debt oriented fund - in a 75%: 25% proportion. The fund allocation may subsequently get altered due to market movements. We will re-balance or reallocate funds in the portfolio based on a pre-defined trigger event. The pre defined trigger in this case is a 15% upward or downward movement in the NAV.

Other than this trigger portfolio strategy, there is nothing unique about the other benefits like the tax benefit, loyalty additions and the flexible life cover.

Infact, as earlier pointed out the charges seem to be on the higher side when compared to the PSU behemoth LIC.

Information available on the brochure does not disclose the commission involved. This is in stark contrast to LIC's benefit illustration of Pension Plus where it gives out the breakup of all charges and also discloses the agent's commission.

The only advantage of buying this product is that you are forced to take a long term view of your investment and in the longer term the fund management charges are lower than Mutual Funds

However in short, we wouldn't recommend buying this policy. Especially when you compare the zero entry load with Mutual Fund products.

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