Peerless Mutual Fund has launched an openended debt scheme called Peerless Income Plus Fund. The scheme's investment objective is to generate regular income through a portfolio of predominantly high quality fixed income securities and with a marginal exposure to equity and equity-related instruments, the company said. The new fund offer (NFO) will open for subscription from June 9, 2010, and will close on July 8, 2010. The issue price for the scheme is Rs 10 each for cash during the NFO and applicable NAV thereafter on an ongoing basis. No entry and exit load will be charged for Peerless Income Plus Fund, However, an exit load of 1% will be applicable, if redeemed before one year. The minimum investment amount for retail investors is Rs 1,000 during NFO. The scheme shall reopen for all transactions not later than 30 days from the closure of NFO at NAV-based prices on all business days. The scheme comes with two investment options — growth and dividend (pay out and re-investment). The minimum investment amount under SIP option is Rs 500 per month, 1,000 per quarter and Rs 2,000 on a half-yearly basis. Peerless Group has a captive base of 8 million customers predominantly in tier II and tier III towns. The company has tried to capture the essence of their investment behaviour and saving habits, the company added.
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...
