Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance has announced the launch of a unit-linked plan that offers a minimum guarantee of 170% at maturity. This Ulip with guaranteed returns will be available for customers from January 11. This is a single-premium life insurance policy, known as Shield Plus, and the term is fixed at 10 years and the minimum premium requirement is Rs 25,000. The returns, which work to around 5.45% on this product, could be compared to that of a bank or a post office deposit. But since the product has an equity exposure, there is a strong possibility of outperformance over the long term, say experts. The sum assured could be equal to 1.1 times or five times of the single premium paid, which takes care of the protection element of the Ulip. However, the insurer has capped the maximum sum assured at 1.1 times the single premium for individuals in the age group of 56-65 years. The product offers a choice of six funds but only Shield Plus Fund offers minimum guaranteed unit price at maturity.
Being a part of the Tata group, the fund has the backing of a very trusted brand name with strong retail connect. While the current CEO has done an excellent job in leveraging the Tata brand name to AMC's advantage, it is ironic that this was just not capitalised on at the start. Incorporated in 1995, Tata Mutual Fund remained an 'also-ran' fund house for around eight years. Till March 2003, it had a little over Rs 1,000 crore in assets and 19 AMCs were ahead of it. But soon after that the equation changed. It was the fastest growing fund house in 2004 and 2005. During these two years, it aggressively launched six equity funds, two debt funds and one MIP. The fund house as of now stands at No. 8 in terms of asset size. This fund house has a lot to offer by way of choice. And, it also has a number of well performing schemes. Tata Pure Equity, Tata Equity PE and Tata Infrastructure are all good funds. It also has quite a few good debt funds. The funds of Tata AMC are known to...