Online Term Insurance vs Offline Term Insurance

Online Term Insurance vs Offline Term Insurance
With online term plans coming in market, two things has happened. First, Customers have really got excited seeing very low premiums which insure them at throw away prices, however low premiums does not appear on the top wish list of customers and what everyone needs is very high claim settlement ratio and excellent customer service. This is where online term plans have disappointed customers, there has been huge disappointment from ICICI iProtect and Aegon Religare iTerm Plan in terms of customer service. There have been cases where customers bought the online term plan and after that, they had horrifying experiences starting from increase of premium once they bought it, No-response from the company for long duration and Long & frustrating delays in medical tests. This is what pisses off customers most and they get a feel that If situation is bad at the time of buying the policy, then what will be the response when their families for claim settlement .
Another important point which comes to a persons mind is Are private Insurance companies safe ? and what is the claim settlement ratio of the company. From last year IRDA report, we came to know that Aegon Religare did not settle even a single claim out of total 7-8 claims they got . However, this years IRDA report (2009-2010) shows that its better at 48% settlement ratio for Aegon Religare, but Life Insurance is not a maths exam where 90-91% marks will make people happy. We all need 100% or 99% at least !. Because most of the companies are very new, the trust factor is missing from public. Note that not everyone who bought online term plans had bad experience, there are many buyers who got very good response and good customer service, but it was a smaller section .
So if you a kind of buyer who understand Insurance very well and how things work in this area and you also have trust in online term plans then you can go for online plans. But if you are not comfortable with it, then you should try the old way of buying insurance through an agent. However it would cost more than online term insurance, which many are comfortable with! .

Market Outlook Nov 2011

The month of October is historically known in capital markets as the month of events and
volatility. In the month there were two major happenings, one on domestic front and the other
one on global front. On Domestic side, though RBI raised the key rates by 25 bps but indicated
that pause in interest rates is likely in Dec meet. This provided much relief to India Inc which is
struggling with higher cost of debt. On Global front, European leaders met to resolve crisis in
Europe and finally fix a deal to end the Greece crisis. It sparked a rally in European and other
global markets but rally was put to halt when Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou shocked the euro zone with his announcement that he will hold a referendum on the Greece bailout deal.Gold rose 5% in the month while dollar rise took a pause. Crude oil price increased from $81.86/barrel to $93.49/barrel.

FII bought Indian equities while DII remained net sellers.We believe that market has formed a bottom around 4750 (Nifty) levels and things will start getting better hereon. We have seen India Inc posting Q2 results as per expectation and some of the corporate posted very good numbers. Though concerns remain on European front after Greek Prime Minister’s announcement but things are likely to improve on domestic side. We hold our advice to investors to keep buying equity mutual funds through SIP/ STP route to generate wealth over the long term. On debt side we continue recommending FMPs as Bank CDs and other CPs are available at very attractive rates and locking these papers in FMPs will yield good returns.

We maintain our view to hold 10% allocation to gold in the overall portfolio.