Every parent aspires to give the best of everything to their children; be it primary education, a good quality lifestyle, secondary education, lavish wedding etc. Child plans of most insurance companies play on this emotional aspect to push their products. Every parent’s top priority is to fulfil his child’s future dreams and aspirations.

HDFC Standard Life recently launched a new child plan – HDFC YougStar Super. Let us explore the features of this product. As per the company brochure the following are the details:

The policy is complaint with the ‘cap on charges’ guidelines for ULIP products issued by IRDA.

Ramesh is a risk averse investor. Over the last many years he has been investing in traditional investment products like Bank Fixed Deposits and Government sponsored schemes like Public Provident Fund (PPF), National Savings Certificate (NSC) and various Postal Office Schemes etc. He was happy with the returns on fixed income securities. So he never gave a serious thought on investing in equity markets. Previously investments in fixed income securities like PPF and NSC used to earn him a return of 12%. But over the last few years the Government has brought down the interest rates on these products from 12% to 8%. Ramesh is not happy with the interest rates coming down from 12% to 8%. But at the same time in the lure to earn high returns Ramesh is sceptical about investing in equity markets as he is not willing to take risk as he has seen some of his friends lose even a portion of their capital because of investments in stock markets. So what is the solution for people like Ramesh who don’t want to risk their capital and at the same time have some exposure to capital markets so that they can earn superior returns as compared to returns given by fixed income securities.

News of companies listed on the stock exchange coming out with rights issues, wherein new shares are offered to existing shareholders in some ratio based on their existing share holding, is very common. But this is not a common scenario among insurance companies, wherein companies come out with a new policy / product which can be bought only by the existing policy holder’s. On 29^th October 2009 India’s largest life insurance company came out with something which can be compared to a listed company coming out with a right’s issue. Yes, you guessed it right; we are talking about Jeevan Nischay. Riding on the high success of Jeevan Aastha last year, this is the latest guaranteed return product from LIC which has been launched on 29^th October 2009 for its existing policy holders. Let’s have a closer look at the product.