The birth of a child brings
immeasurable joy to parents. However, after the initial euphoria subsides, the
future expenses start staring at you in the face. Add to this the innumerable
ads on TV and print media, and you’re left with only one choice: buy a child
plan.
That’s the beginning of your second
problem – there are innumerable child plans out there. How do you know which
one suits you the most?
Ask yourself these questions.
1. When will your child need the
money?
2. How much will you need for the particular
goal (marriage, education)?
3. How much will you be able to save?
4. How much insurance cover do I
need?
Understanding Child Insurance Plans
There are basically 3 types of child
insurance plans.
Money-Back: This is by
far one of the most popular plans. Under this plan, your child will get
survival benefits at regular intervals. For example, when he turns 18 years, he
would get about 20% of sum assured, and a further 20% at age of 20 and so on.
This plan is useful for those who feel the need for lump sum requirement at
regular intervals and helps you in life stage planning.
Another benefit these plans offer is
the premium waiver benefit, which ensures that in case of death of the parent,
then the premiums are waived off and the policy continues with benefits.
A disadvantage of depending on this
alone is that its returns often fail to match inflation, especially if you are
planning to buy it for your child’s education. Education costs are growing at
around 12% whereas money-backs would give you around 7-9%, leaving you grossly
underfunded at the time of goal. Also, the premiums are steep.
ULIPS: ULIPs are
non-traditional plans wherein returns are market-dependent. If the parent dies
(or, as in the case of some policies, gets diagnosed with some critical illness),
then the child would receive the sum assured in a lump sum. Also, future
premiums are waived off and on maturity, the child would get the fund value
too.
ULIP plans offer variety of funds
ranging from conservative to balanced or aggressive. Under ULIPs, you can
change from debt to equity and vice versa without the worry of taxation, thus
enabling you to benefit from both timing the market and also rebalancing your
portfolio.
But, ULIPs levy a variety of charges
by way of premium allocation charges, policy administration charges, mortality
charges, fund management charges, etc. This would affect the returns generated
by the investment in market related instruments and ultimately the corpus that
your child receives. Another negative of ULIP is that in case of an emergency,
if you want to surrender or do partial withdrawal, the charges are high and
also attract tax.
While a long term ULIP (above 15
years) could actually cost less than a mutual fund, it is less flexible. You
just can’t move from one ULIP to another as in case of mutual funds. If you are
putting your entire money in child ULIP plans and if it underperforms on a
consistent basis, you are stuck!
Endowment Policies: Endowment policies
are one where lump sum amount is paid at the time of the maturity along with
bonuses. This is very useful to plan for your child’s big expenses like
wedding, higher education, etc. And, unlike ULIPs, there is a minimum
guaranteed amount of payment. Besides, you may get bonuses too.
Endowment policies too invest in
market-backed securities, but unlike ULIPs, they invest only in debt products
and the returns too are not exactly spectacular. And, if you require higher
cover, you will have to pay a steeper premium. So, an ideal way is to take up
an endowment policy as a debt portion of your overall asset allocation.
Almost all child insurance plans
cover the parent and thus, if in an event of an unfortunate untimely death of
the parent, the child’s needs would still be taken care of by way of lump sum
payment on death and also on maturity. But beware of plans that cover the child
and not the parent! It is your child who needs financial security and not you!
Another thing to be noted is that,
there are riders like waiver of premium offered along with child
plans to cover the untimely death of the parent. The policy continues here
at the absence of the parent, but the benefit comes at a high cost as the
premium increases due to this rider. And, the mortality rate charges for a
child plan are quite high too.
Source: https://blog.bankbazaar.com/who-else-wants-to-know-how-child-plans-work/












