One of the big advantages that a ULIP offers is that whatever be your specific financial objective, chances are that there is a ULIP which is just right for you. The figure below gives a general guide to the different goals that people have at various age-groups and thus, various life-stages.Depending on your specific life-stage and the corresponding goal, there is a ULIP which can help you plan for it.

ULIPs for retirement planning:

Retirement is the end of active employment and brings with it the cessation of regular income. Today an increasing number of people have stated planning for their retirement for below mentioned reasons:

• Almost 96% of the working population has no formal provisions for retirement
• With the growing nuclearisation of family structure, traditional support system of the younger earning members is no longer available
• Developments in the healthcare space has lead to an increase in life expectancy
• Cost of living is increasing at an alarming rate

Pension plans from insurance companies ensure that regular, disciplined savings in such plans can accumulate over a period of time to provide a steady income post-retirement. Usually all retirement plans have two distinctive phases:

• The accumulation phase when you are saving and investing during your earning years to build up a retirement corpus and
• The withdrawal phase when you actually reap the benefits of your investment as your annuity payouts begin

In a typical pension plan you have the flexibility to make a lump sum payment or a regular contribution every year during your earning years. Your money is then invested in funds of your choice. You can opt to receive the annuity at any time after vesting age (age at which you become eligible for pension chosen by you at the inception of the plan).

Most of the Unit linked pension plans also come with a wide range of annuity options which gives you choice in structuring the post-retirement benefit pay-outs. Also at the time of vesting you can make a lump sum tax-exempted withdrawal of up to 33 per cent of the accumulated corpus.

In a Retirement plan, the earlier you begin the greater you gain post retirement due to the power of compounding.

Let us take an example of Gaurav & Hari. Both of them want to retire at the age of 60. Gaurav starts investing Rs. 10,000 every year from the age of 25 till the time that he retires. In all, he would have invested Rs. 350,000. If his investments were to earn 7% return every year, at the time of his retirement, Gaurav will have a retirement corpus of Rs. 13, 82,368.

Now, Hari starts investing 10 years later (i.e. at the age of 35) and in order to make up for the lost time, invests Rs.15,000 every year (which is 50% more than Gaurav's annual investment). So, by the time of his retirement, he would have invested Rs. 3,75,000. And assuming the same annual return of 7%, he will end up with a retirement corpus of Rs 9, 48,735.

So, you see how despite setting aside more than 50% of Gaurav's annual contribution, Hari ends up with a retirement corpus which is almost a third lesser than Gaurav's. That is the power of compounding.
Which is why, it is never too early to invest in a ULIP for retirement planning.

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ULIPs for long term wealth creation

ULIPs are the right insurance solutions for you if you are looking for a strong wealth creation proposition allied to a core insurance benefit. Such plans are ideal for people who are in their late 20s and early 30s and by investing in such a plan get the flexibility of using it to fund any of their long-term financial goals such as purchase of a house or funding their children's education. The added element of life cover serves to make these plans a wholesome financial investment option.

Wealth Creation ULIPs can be primarily classified as:

• Single premium - Regular premium plan:
  

  Depending upon you needs & premium paying capacity you can either opt for a single premium plan where you need to pay premium only once during the term of entire policy or regular premium plans where you can premium at a frequency chosen by you depending upon your convenience

• Guarantee plans - Non guarantee plans:
  

  Today there are wealth creation ULIPS which also offer guaranteed benefit. These plans are ideal insurance-cum-investment option for customers who want to enjoy the potentially higher returns (over the long term) of a market linked instrument, but without taking any market risk. On the other hand non guarantee plans comes with an in - built range of fund options to choose from - ranging from aggressive funds (Primarily invested in equities with the general aim of capital appreciation) to conservative funds (invested in cash, bank deposits and money market instruments with aim of capital preservation) so that you can decide to invest your money in line with your market outlook, time horizon and your investment preferences and needs.

• Life Stage based - Non life Stage based:
  

  Life Stage based ULIPs factor in the fact that your priorities differ at different life stages & hence distribute your money across equity & debt. Here the initial allocation is decided as per your age since age is a significant indicator of risk appetite. Such a strategy ensures that the asset allocation at all times is in sync with your age and changing financial needs.

To know your life insurance needs, click here

ULIPs for child education

One of the most important responsibilities you have as a parent is to ensure that your child gets the best possible education that can be provided. Apart from conventional schooling, it becomes important to expose your child to different activities such as dance, painting and sports training for holistic development. As a parent, you want to ensure that their development is not hampered either due to rising costs or unforeseen circumstances.

Today there are ULIPs that offer money at key milestones of your child's education thus ensuring that your child's education continues unhampered even if something unfortunate happens to you. While, the death of a parent is an irreparable emotional loss, child education plans safeguard the child against the financial ramifications of the death of a parent.
Apart from above mentioned benefit, child plans also offers below mentioned features.

• Flexibility of adding on various riders like Income benefit rider, disability rider etc to get additional benefits .For e.g. In case of income benefit rider, In the event of the death of the parent, the child will receive a regular pre-determined amount every year to meet the educational expenses.




• In case of unfortunate incidence of the death of a parent, not only will the child receive the sum assured immediately but will also continue to receive money at the key educational milestones.

ULIPs for health solutions

When you are young and working you save for various goals like marriage, education, retirement etc. but saving for health care is never considered or left for later. During these years we have various sources of income or savings on which we can rely for health emergencies.

But with increasing cost of healthcare, proportion of this spend is increasing at an alarming pace. This is forcing families to borrow or sell assets to meet expenses during medical emergencies. And during old age health care expenses increase due to health deterioration because of age and higher incidence of chronic illness. Thus it is important for you to invest in health insurance today so that tomorrow you are fully prepared to meet rising healthcare expenses, which would be incurred during old age, with the right health insurance plan.

Health ULIP is a recent innovation from the health insurance industry. In a health ULIP part of your premiums are allocated for investment designed specifically to build a health fund to meet future health related expenses. It aims to create a health savings kitty by investing in a long term flexible savings plan with multiple fund options. The health fund thus created allows you to claim for health related expenses of any kind and also fund your future health insurance charges. You can also avail of tax benefit on premium paid u/s 80D.