BHARTI AXA Life has started offering its new child plan — Bright Stars PLUS — with a feature that promises to hand out 7% of the fund value as ‘Jumpstart’ benefit. Like several other child plans, this product comes with a waiver of premium benefit in the event of the policyholder’s death. In such a circumstance, the company undertakes to pay the regular premiums into the policy till maturity. Policyholders can choose from five fund options, and are allowed 12 free switches a year between these funds.
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...