Country's largest lender SBI's pension corpus could be regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority, opening a new area for the interim regulator. "We have given approval to SBI for management of its pension corpus by our fund managers and now they are talking with its trust," a PFRDA official said. Regulating the corpus of companies is a new area for the interim regulator. Till now, PFRDA-appointed fund managers, under the New Pension System (NPS), were handling only the corpus of individuals. Six PFRDA-appointed fund managers IDFC Mutual Fund, Kotak Mahindra, SBI, UTI Asset Management, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and Reliance MF are handling the corpus under the NPS, which was thrown open to all citizens from May 1 this year. There are 22 contact and collection centres including SBI, ICICI Bank, the Postal Department, IDBI Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Axis Bank and Union Bank of India for all citizens' scheme.
ICICI Pru LifeTime and ICICI Pru Lifestage are Unit Linked Pension Plans. Such insurance linked retirement plans are neither good investments nor do they offer sufficient insurance cover. As you can see, these have turned out to be bad deals. In the Lifetime plan, the fund value is not even equal to the total premiums that you have paid and in the Lifestage plan your return is just about 6% which is quite low. The mortality charges are as per your age which is why they have increased. Moreover, once these plans matures, you will have to compulsorily opt for annuity (regular income) and the annuity rates are generally modest. Assuming these plans mature in the next one year, it will be wise to surrender the plan now and curb your future commitments. Before you choose to buy a term plan, you have to consider a few points. You need to insure yourself, only during the time you are working and your family is financially dependent on you. At the age of 59, not all insurance companies w...
