Take a informed decision...

When I started investing about three years back, I used to get lot of misleading advice and every advisor I found was interested in his short term personal gains.
Indian investment market has a very high potential but lacks on a simple concept of transparency. Investment brokers and agents (especially Insurance agents) make full use of this lack of transparency to earn booties by spreading wrong information and misleading the unsuspecting investors.

So, I decided of creating some awareness, that may benefit the masses in general and friends in particular.

Do's :

• Get yourself a term policy. As the name suggests, term policies provide cover for a certain time span and the sum insured is payable on the death of the life assured within the policy period. Please note that if the policy holder outlives the policy he does not get any monetary benefits. This type of policy gives very high insurance value for a little premium (Insurance of Rs. 10 lakh, for a premium of about Rs. 3300.00 per year, for a Male aged 30 yrs).
• It is advisable to take additional riders like accidental death and critical illness for an additional premia. The accidental death benefit rider provides the life assured a higher risk cover in case the death is due to an accident and the critical illness rider provides a lumpsum in case the life assured is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease covered under the policy, such as renal failure, heart attack, cancer etc.
• Buy a Accidental death/disability policy
• Buy a medical insurance covering yourself and family : One should have adequate risk cover for medical insurance, given the rising costs of medical treatment. Ideally, one should go for a family floater cover, since it is cheaper than individual insurance of all family members and works on the premise that all family members would generally not require medical treatment at the same time. Therefore one can go for a higher risk cover at a lower cost.
• Opt for yearly mode of premium payment as it works aout to be cheap if calculated against Half yearly, Quarterly or monthly modes.