•   Overview
•   Your Insurance Needs
•   Life Insurance
•   General Insurance
•   Health Insurance
•   NAV ULIP Schemes

Calculating life insurance needs is not a simple exercise but you must evaluate your current and required cover in 2010 and take corrective action. Remember that each of us has our own lifestyle, goals, aspirations and dependents which may be completely different from the life situation for your friend or colleague. So what works for someone else may not work for you.

There are essentially three ways to calculate your insurance needs:
»  Expense protection:
Calculates the corpus required to take care of the family's future expenses and goals. Inflation diminishes the value of money and hence expenses need to be adjusted to inflation for calculation of protection required.

»  Human life value:
It is the economic value of an individual; the present value of all his or her future income. Setting aside the part of income one spends on oneself, the protection required through human life value calculates today's value of one's income for the years till his or her retirement.

»  Needs analysis:
In this method you calculate your needs by considering each of your dependents and what financial milestones you want to achieve for them. The needs may range from child education, marriage to repayment of loans. Next you assess your current assets and investments and shortfall due to loss of life. This gap in income can be filled up by insurance.

For what term do you need this cover?
Ideally, insurance must be taken to cover the working period in one's life. You take insurance to protect your dependents from the loss of your income; using the same logic, you take insurance for the time that the dependents are being supported by your income. Hence, it is advisable to take insurance till one's retirement. However, when insurance is taken for protecting and saving towards specific goals, then the tenure of the plan should match the years left for meeting the goal.

What type of products suit you?
Choosing a product will depend on the specific need and the life stage one is in. What is the final product you will choose? When there are multiple choices that match the need, it is the affordability that makes the final choice. Most importantly, individuals must be aware of the purpose of the insurance they are buying. They must know that life insurance products for investment and savings are structured for the long term and meant for someone who is earning and whose earnings are supporting his/her dependant(s).

For any query, please do contact us.