Category: General

Learning from Comments [Part 1]

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you read comments ? There is huge amount of discussion doing on in comments section, however many readers do not find time or interest to dig into the comments and follow the discussions, I would say comments have more knowledge than the article itself , as there are personal experiences and knowledge from many different readers, there is a threaded discussion on some topic in comments, which are more lively and engaging. So if you are just reading articles and not comments, you are missing a lot of things . So I went through some articles comment one by one and consolidated some learning and facts for my readers 🙂 .

  • RBI has changed the way of interest calculation on your saving account now, earlier the interest was paid on the minimum balance in your account between the 10th of the month and the end of the month. Now the interest is paid on daily basis , Read More
  • As per research Women are better investors than men, This is because of many factors like women risk adjusted returns are generally higher than Men , women tend to hold investments in stock market for longer then men . Read in detail  Here and Here
  • In Public Banks the cashier or officers can tell you things like “ULIP’s are for young people , PPF is for old people” , and hence try to influence your decision-making. Once they find out that you are an NRI or from upper middle class, they can start pestering you too much because of the sales pressure or the attractive commission’s attached to it .
  • Why the Guaranteed NAV Plans stress over number 7 ? Anoop asked me this question and my views were that the stock markets in India has been running in a 8 yrs cycle from last some decades, so after this recent crash, another big crash is expected to be after 7-8 yrs now. So they want to make sure they are giving investors “highest NAV in 7 yrs” which will be the maximum point in coming 10-11 yrs assuming markets do crash after 7-8 yr and then stay below that point for another 2-3 years .  8 Year cycle Trend : Sensex is following an eight year cycle trend. The break of the channel lines in 1992 saw the index correcting over 53%. After eight years in 2000, the index once again fell into the grip of bearish cycle and corrected over 57%.  In 2008, the faced the similar fate. Breaking the long term rising channel, the index once again echoed the similar trend and has shed more than 63.7% of its weights from the top : LINK
  • If you sit back and think for just a moment, you’ll realise that there is reasonable outward evidence that the Unit Trust’s history could repeat itself with LIC. It’s true that there’s a lot that is different about the regulatory framework and the nature of LIC’s liabilities. However, the core reasons that led to UTI’s collapse also exist for the LIC today: there is an unapologetic tendency to use the LIC as a bottomless pit of money of which there wasn’t enough accountability. The blatant use of this money to bailout the public sector IPOs is only the most recent and the most visible example-given the lack of public information, it’s not possible to make any assumptions that everything else must be OK with LIC’s investments-just as it wasn’t with the Unit Trust.  – Views of Dhirendra Kumar of Valueresearchonline at  “LIC can be the new Unit Trust of India?” .
  • The way KYC is done in banks is different from Mutual Funds. Banks KYC is to be done at time of A/c opening only. They just take your documents and the concerned form is attached with A/c opening form. Since you are signing A/c opening form you don’t need to sign KYC form seperately. Thats the reason banks only take your documents for the proof.  Even later also you need to give only the proof. – Thanks to Jitendra Solanki for answer .
  • A horrible Credit Card Experience from Brij Mohan

    • My Experience with HDFC CC is very terrible, I paid all my dues before I left for UK, and this was a free CC, after one year when my CC expired, they sent me a new CC and made some charges of around 300-400 rs (approx). Since I was not in India so I was not able to receive the Credit Card, I sent them a mail first few mails I did not get proper reply as I was referring to my old credit card number. I also tried to call on ISD rates to HDFC call center they said we can’t help you as you do not have valid Credit Card. When after around 2 years I returned I found my bill is blown up to 6000. I tried to convince them, at last they told that they have their office in Bangalore too you can go and settle there, as they have added my name in defaulters database also. I went there and literally they were blackmailing that if you don’t pay all the amount they will not remove my name from the defaulters database, and finally I paid whatever the amount they said. I thought it’s all over. Finally last year when I tried to apply for car loan, it was rejected by ICICI Bank and few other bank, fortunately it was approved by Axis bank. But still just to check I applied for ICICI Bank CC, and CitiBank credit card they rejected my application without mentioning any reason. I am feeling like I am a terrorist or they have banned me in this country for my life time, even though I paid off all the dues(which was all illegal). Just last week only i came to know about CBIL properly, so I have sent a snail mail to them for my credit record. Just to check my credit record. but still I don’t know what will be the Next surprise. I will only tell if you are using CC use it very carefully and never take anything lightly, even if it is a single paisa, just clarify this and clear it off and make sure it is really done. In short I feel using a Credit Card is like walking on the Sword or Fire. It’s very dangerous thing.

  • Difference between Auto-Debt and ECS : ECS is a facility to credit/debit funds between banks using clearing house. However Auto-debit is the facility within bank.
  • Tip from Partha Iyenger : If you want to complain about some products, the customer care is generally not helpful and they do not care, However the CEO’s and MD’s of the company are helpful and are very sensitive to customer feedback, they are generally responsive. The problem lies in contacting them, so here is a Tip : If you have a complaint against dell computers. First find who is the CEO of the company , for example its Michael Dell , now simple write to [email protected] ,  [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. One of them will work. Please use cc while addressing to the CEO, the person you are addressing will get jitters and before he can act, he will get a call from the ceo’s office to sort it out asap. This trick can work most of the times .
  • Again an info from Partha Iyenger : Many people know that our credit cards and other credit history is stored and tracked by CIBIL, but do you know now even your other utilities bills get tracked and reported to industry associations and in turn to cibil ? for eg, if you don’t pay your mobile bills by moving to other city, you can be easily tracked or for that matter if you do not pay electricity bills of reliance, your phone connection would get cut and your rating system would go for a toss, its all happening In india now , but you don’t know 🙂 . That means when you apply for your home loan or car loan or personal loan, you would be disqualified. so every one, please pay check your bills, resolve any payments with the bank or respective firms (file complaints with the ceo,  don’t ever talk to call centres. It doesn’t work ) and clear it . Read A close look at Real Estate Returns in India
  • Personal Debt to GDP ratio has tripled in 5 years in India. Personal debt includes – credit card, personal loan, auto loan, home loan and consumer durable loans. To be precise, India’s personal debt to gdp ratio has moved from 5% to 15% and micro finance institutions adding to this kitty in a ferocious pace, of course its nothing compared to america’s 120% ! but we could get there in the next 10-15 years, if we don’t watch ourselves. The onus is on us to be prudent in our spending. Today, most youngsters swipe the cards through emi schemes to buy consumer durable and electronic goods as if there is no tomorrow. Our older generation saved first and then bought it, today we don’t wait, we want everything now. The credit cards is a great tool for instant gratification rather than saving and buying it.
  • We feel ECS is very convenient and safe, while that is true, but anything which is good can turn out to be very bad also. Read a horrible experience on How a customer faced Experience like Hell with Kotal and ICICI for stopping his ECS facility . Here is another article on ECS from PV Subramanyam , a must read .
  • Jitendra Solanki shares a shocking story on how you can become an LIC Agent. “Around three years back I went to an LIC DO to talk to him for an agency.After submitting the required fees i was given a question paper and the answers of the same and was told to just ratto the answers and start generating business.Is this how an agency of LIC is given? ”

Conclusion

All this wealth of knowledge is present in Comments section and different readers provide these information when there is discussion , so please ask questions, those questions will lead to discussions and in turn it will lead to more information from other readers who have faced an issue or have some experience .

Comments , Let me know how you liked this “Learning from Comments” section  ? Is it a good idea ? What are your experiences with comments overall ?

New income tax slabs and its Impact on Common Man’s financial life

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday announced revised tax slabs for individual tax payers and also said that the New tax rates would offer relief to 60 per cent of taxpayers.

But looking at the below comparison between the tax payable last year and the proposed one it seems that the so called “Aam Aadmi”, the middle class would not be gaining so much tax benefits as there are absolutely no tax savings for the person earning up to Rs. 3 lakh p.a. and those who are earning up to Rs. 4 lakh would end up saving only Rs. 10,000.

income tax slab

New tax slabs would benefit greatly to the higher middle class as compared to the Aam Aadmi, though the additional investment of Rs. 20,000/- in the infrastructure bonds would provide some relief especially to those who are interested in traditional savings tools.

Introducing Saral-2 form back is a good initiative and would make it more Saral for the tax payers to file their IT returns without hassle as the current ITR are not easy for the taxpayers to prepare & file on their own.

In order to make tax compliance process more efficient two more CPCs (Centralized Processing Centre) are proposed to be set up apart from extending “Sevottam” a pilot project at Pune, Kochi and Chandigarh to four more cities in the year. Sevottam provides a single window system for registration of all applications including those for redressal of grievances as well as paper returns.

Long awaited increase in the limits for turnover over which accounts need to be audited is also enhanced to Rs. 60 lakhs for businesses and to Rs. 15 lakhs for professionals as compared to the existing limits of Rs.40 lakh and 10 lakh respectively.

Tax Slabs for 2010-2011

The basic threshold limit for income tax exemption will remain at Rs.1.60 lakh. Under the new proposal, 10 per cent tax will be levied between Rs.1,60,001 and Rs.5,00,000, 20 per cent on incomes between Rs.5,00,001 and Rs.8,00,000 and 30 per cent above Rs.8,00,000.

Apart from this you also get Rs 20,000 additional Tax benefit if you invest in long term Infrastructure Bonds.

Tax Slabs
OLD NEW TAX RATE
Upto Rs.1.6 lakh Upto Rs.1.6 lakh NIL
Rs.1.6 – 3 lakh Rs.1.6 to 5 lakh 10%
Rs.3 – 5 lakh Rs.5 to 8 lakh 20%
ABOVE Rs.5 lakh ABOVE Rs.8 lakh 30%
Tax Slabs
OLD NEW TAX RATE
Upto Rs.1.6 lakh Upto Rs.1.6 lakh NIL
Rs.1.6-3 lakh Rs.1.6 to 5 lakh 10%
Rs.3-5 lakh Rs.5 to 8 lakh 20%
ABOVE Rs.5 lakh ABOVE Rs.8 lakh 30%
  • Exemption Limit for Women : 1.9 Lacs
  • Exemption Limit for Senior Citizen : 2.4 Lacs

How Much do you Save because of New Tax Slab?

Income

Old Slab

New Slab

Your Savings
60,000 0 0 0
3,00,000 14,000 14,000 0
4,00,000 35,020
 24,720
 10,300
5,00,000 55,620
 35,020 20,600
6,00,000
 86,520 55,620 30,900
7,00,000
 117,420
 76,220
 41,200
8,00,000
 148,320 96,820
 51,500
9,00,000 179,220 127,720
 51,500
10,00,000
 210,120 158,620
 51,500

What are your comments on New Tax Slab ? How is it going to Impact you?

This is a guest article written by Mr. Rishabh Parakh who is a Chartered Accountant and Director at MoneyPlant Consulting he had been contributing to leading newspapers like DNA & NavBharat (Money Plant Consulting is a premier outsourcing & a financial services provider which aims to offer solutions for all your financial needs and queries.)

How many Mutual Funds you should have ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Investment in how many mutual funds is enough? Though it depends on individual needs and situation, we can always arrive at a number or a range which should be optimal for a large chunk of mutual funds  investors. Many a times Investors invest in a large number of mutual funds which does not add any additional value to their portfolio most. They have to understand that investing in every new mutual fund coming into the market will not help them in any ways because after a point they have their investment in most of the companies in stock market. In this article lets see how many mutual funds a common man should invest in general.

Reason we buy mutual funds

Before moving forward, let’s understand why do we buy Mutual funds at the first place? We sometimes neglect the basic reason to invest in mutual funds, the reason is very simple:

We invest in Mutual Fund because we have money to invest but we dont have the expertise to invest in Stock Market. We do not want to spend time to manage the investments directly in different stocks and we want to make sure that we diversify our investment across a number of different companies.

Statistics on Number of Mutual funds in a portfolio

I conducted a Poll on this topic and we have some interesting results .

Facts

  • 63% people invested in less than 6 Mutual funds
  • 84% people invested in less than 10 mutual funds
  • 50% people invested in 1-6 mutual funds
  • The maximum number of investors were in the optimal range of 4-6 .
  • Total Vote : 225
  • Average number of Mutual funds : 5.57

If you look closely the graph results mimic binomial distribtution (Ignore this if you don’t understand), which shows that law of numbers apply even to this phenomenon and somewhere the average number of mutual fund converges to the most logical number by default .

Why it does not add much value when you invest in more mutual funds?

Each mutual fund on an average invest in at least 50-60 companies. If you buy 3-4 mutual funds then you are anyways going to invest in close to 100 companies overall (considering there will be some overlaps). So If you buy any equity diversified mutual funds, your money is going to be invested in some of the best companies probably 50-100 of them. Now when you buy another Equity diversified mutual fund there are high chances that the money is going to be invested in almost same set of companies in some proportion, so you are going to invest in same set of companies again. Buying 2nd mutual fund of same category will obviously increase your reach to some companies which were not part of the 1st mutual fund. But now as and when you add 3rd, 4th or 5th mutual fund, you will actually be invested indirectly to same set of companies. The price movement of these companies share prices will be same for all the mutual funds (most probably).

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So what you have to understand is that after a certain point, adding more mutual funds of the same category is of no much value for the portfolio. Adding more number of mutual funds leads to another problem which is tracking problem if you are a kind of investor who buys a mutual funds and just looks at the NAV to find out if you are in profit or loss then you are not doing right thing. Mutual funds investing is very much close to Share investing where you track the instrument, see how it’s performing, what’s going inside the fund, how is fund manager doing, how are they churning the portfolio etc etc. So if you have too many mutual funds in your portfolio, it will be too tough to track them and your portfolio will be very cluttered.

You have to understand that investment of 1 lac in 20 mutual fund will roughly behave in the same way as investment in 5 mutual funds because finally the investment has happened in shares of top companies (roughly the same number of shares), so the investment value is result of the underlying share prices movement and not the number of mutual funds in the portfolio.

Thumb rules:

You can ask two basic questions to yourself to find out if your portfolio size is too big for yourself:

  1. Can you name all the mutual funds in your portfolio and a 2-3 line explanation about what the fund does?
  2. Can you guess roughly how does the movement in stock market affect your corpus in general? If stock market is going to drop or increase by X%, so you have a rough idea of what will happen to your portfolio at a high level?

Example of a Portfolio of Mutual funds

Let’s create a sample portfolio of mutual funds. We will consider ETF’s as a mutual funds for this example:

  • 2-3 Equity diversified Mutual Fund (Tax + Non-Tax saving): See the List
  • 1-2 Debt Fund: See the List
  • 1-2 ETF’s or Index Funds

Note that 2-3 Equity Diversified Mutual funds will cover almost all the big companies in your portfolio. Some ETF or index fund will give index level exposure and make sure you invest in top companies. Debt funds will add exposure to Debt part and no-correlation with Equity.

Most of the people do not invest in the same old fund they have bought, they feel that buying every other mutual funds in market will some way help them earn extra returns which is far from truth. Consistency in investment and faith in one of the good funds you have chosen is the right way to invest in mutual fund.

How having more than one Mutual fund in portfolio reduces the risk?

You have to understand the concept of standard deviation, it’s nothing but risk and return potential from mutual funds point of view. So a single mutual fund has the highest standard deviation and the risk and return can be very high. Adding more funds will help in reducing the standard deviation of the portfolio. As per Morning Star Research (Many thanks to Hemant Beniwal for sharing this)

After 4 funds, the effect of adding another fund diminished. It’s still noticeable, but not so dramatic. After 7 funds, things have mostly leveled out and after 10 funds, a portfolio’s standard deviation stays nearly the same regardless of how many funds you add. Thus, once you own between 7 and 10 funds, there may be no need for more. In fact, the more funds you own, the more likely you are to own at least a couple that do practically the same thing. That could be a drag on your returns because if you have multiple funds doing the same thing, one is likely to be better than the others. Focus on the superior fund and you’ll get better returns .

How do you Buy Mutual Funds? [POLL]

Comments, Please comment on what do you think is the optimal number of mutual funds?

Force Selling combined with other financial products

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Can some one force you to buy ULIPs when you take a loan from the bank? I am seeing very unethical things going on in financial world these days in India. Lot’s of people are complaining that many companies are selling junk things like Endowment plans or ULIPs (which make big commissions) along with big loans or something big where a small ULIP might look like “Ok, let’s take this small thing for that big thing”. But this is not right! This is breaking the faith and such practices are against the principal of  utmost good faith!             Let’s see some real life cases:

Force Selling along with Loan Approval

I had to take this policy without knowing any details about this, as the Barclays finance company said this is mandatory for approving any loan , not sure how far it is correct. But as I was running out of time, i opted for it.

Force Selling along with Locker Facility

I requested for a locker in ICICI Bank in Hydderabad, VIdyanagar Branch, and they said there is lot of people in queue for lockers so they cant give me. But if I invbest in ULIP or make a FD of 5-10 Lakhs he said they will consider my Locker request on priority. This is forced selling and I told them straightaway that making investments for a locker is ridiculous reason and stayed away. I wish I could complain this to somebody but there is no written proof of they asking for investing in ULIP as it was verbal conversation.

Force Selling along with Home Loan

I thought banks like SBI would be straight in their clauses. I had a difficult experience recently with my loan.

 

Pre-Processing Blues:

The loan agent who works in my office, did not have any clue on the terms and conditions on loan. He was a retired officer from SBI and used his position to leverage the file movement. One fine day, he asked for payment against the services rendered (It was a shock to me). I guess, he would be getting some service fee on my loan from Bank already. I gave some required papers for gaurantor to him which was not in my file. I think he lost them. I reduced my loan amount during processing, for which I had submitted the request letter. Upon my loan approval, I noticed that there is a 1.9 Lakh additional loan sanctioned for me and added to the loan amount. I had declined the insurnace cover for the loan as I had planned to cover it on yoy basis. I discussed this with the manager and he agreed to waive it.

Next, the gauranor must be present when you go to sign the papers. I managed to get the gaurantor to accompany me during early morning hours.

Forcibly Selling SBI-Insurance with the Loan

I saw that Insurance cover has not been removed and the SBI person would not agree to waive it even when i told that i would buy SBI insurance policy. I was told that I need to go to branch where I applied for loan and get the approval from bank manager and then it will again go for approval in the loan processing center. After a lot of persuation with the sanctioning office and Chief manager, I managed to convince for a year on year insurance cover which I had to buy for this year on the spot.

Further, I was told that my this year loan is fixed for 8% ( I was happy that I was wise in choosing SBI) then I was updated that my loan is fixed at 9.75% for next 4 years. No one had told us this clause until we went for signing. We had asked this question from clerk to Manager level. No one had a clarity on it but the clause was there in the documents and I had no option but to sign it. In the recessionary situations, I understand that the rates will look further south but I will be stuck at 9.75 for next 4 years.

Otherwise, I am kind of satisfied with the pace and professionalism of officers but I feel that more transparency in the terms and condition is must.

Moral of the story: Read all the clauses before you go to sign and do not be satisfied if you do not get an answer. Private or Public banks – every one has clauses in fine prints that suits the bank and there is no one to tell you about them.

Link to original comment

Force selling along with Opening NRE Account

About a year ago, a 70-year-old non-resident Indian (NRI) woman went to one of the largest private sector banks in the country to open a non-resident external (NRE) account. While opening the account, an executive from the bank lured the lady into buying a co-branded insurance product under the pretext of ‘mandatory’ rules. He also told her that she will have to pay the amount of Rs10 lakh only once. With no option left for opening the account, the lady obliged and left for her overseas home.

“When that lady returned after 12 months, she was asked to pay one more premium for the insurance plan. Since the bank would not return the money which she had paid for the first premium, she was again forced to pay the second instalment for the insurance policy that was forced upon her,” revealed an independent financial advisor (IFA). Read full article

Another Case of force selling along with transfer of loan

I also also seen a case where one guy wanted to transfer his Home loan (ICICI Bank)  from Pune to Delhi and just for this , he was being forced to buy an ULIP from the officials who would be helping him in the paper work , other wise his work was stuck . At last when he approched Delhi branch , his work was done smoothly . So in this case the officials were forcing the unsuitable product.

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How to Complain for the Force Selling

To tackle such increasing fraudulent cases, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced a banking ombudsman scheme under Section 35 (A) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. The Act is in effect from 1995. A customer can register a complaint with an ombudsman if no reply is received from the bank within one month or if the bank rejects the complaint, or if the customer is not satisfied with the reply given by the bank. If a complaint is not settled within one month, the banking ombudsman may pass an award up to Rs10 lakh or to the extent of the losses suffered by the customer up to Rs10 lakh, whichever amount is lower. Between the years 2002-06, the banking ombudsman has settled around 36,000 complaints.

Conclusion

This is nothing but a form of corruption happening in Financial world these days. Sellers are thinking that loans are critical things for everyone and in order to let them happen smooth they can force people by miss-selling them, they feel like people in India are anyways frustrated with other things, what will they do? They will enquire a bit and then finally they will lose the patience and just buy the products and that happens. But please don’t let this happen. Raise your voice, ask explanation, demand proof and evidence, threaten them to complain and take matter higher to banking ombusdsman and consumer court etc. I am sure they will budge after some time.

Even on this blog which discussing PPF account opening at SBI we came to know that SBI bank officials sometimes force PPF account openers to start a Saving Bank account at SBI, which is a form of force selling.

Comments, please share some live examples you know of? Has this happened to you? What can be done to solve? Come unite and share ideas, you can leave a mark!!

Top 10 tricks used by Agents for misselling financial products

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Buyers Beware. This is the mantra one has to follow in Indian financial markets. From last many years agents and so-called “Financial Advisors” are using fancy words and tactics to lure investors and sell them inappropriate products like wrong Mutual funds, ULIPS, ULPP’s and Endowment Policies.

In this article we will see what are the common tactics used by agents and how we should handle them and demand logical explanation.

mis-seling

Note that this is not an exhaustive list and there are many more miss-selling techniques which is not covered here. Lets see them one by one.

1# High Dividends declared by Mutual funds.

This is very common tactic used by agents. Even the mutual fund companies advertise about big dividend payout to lure investors.

Investors who do not how mutual funds with dividend options work fall in the trap thinking that dividend is something extra which they get apart from growth, where as the reality is that dividend is your own money which comes back to you and then NAV goes down by that much quantity.

Have a look at Difference between Growth and Dividend option in Mutual funds

2# Premium can be stopped after the first 3 years

This is a very effective statement because every investor wants “no trap” investment option, hearing that we just have to premiums for 3 yrs and still our insurance cover and policy will keep running makes us interested in these products.

There are two wrong things here:

Firstly, ULIP premiums can be stopped even before 3 yrs, there is just lock in period of 3 yrs, even some agents don’t know that you can stop the premiums of ULIP’s anytime after 1 yr and you won’t loose 100% money.

The other thing is that advising paying premiums just for 3 yrs is wrong thing as ULIPs are long-term products and should not be used for short term. This is against the basic principle of any equity related product.

3# This fund has returned 36.6% annual return in last 4 years

Last 4-6 yrs have been extremely good for Indian markets and performance of every mutual funds, ETF or Equity linked product has been great. This single most fact has been used by agents and they have been advertising about the “great performance” of their respective ULIP’s and mutual funds.

What one has to really look at are the returns a product has provided over and above its benchmark or other peers. If Nifty has given 40% return and a mutual funds with bench mark as Nifty has given 41%, there is nothing great in this1p..

In fact its better to use Nifty ETF’s then and get 40% return without the fund manager risk and other costs associated with Mutual fund . We should also ask the agent about the performance of product in bad times and not just good times .

4# ULIPs offers guaranteed returns

This is not true! Any Unit Linked product does not come with Guaranteed returns. Agents some times just say this to attract customers and moreover their Greed! There might be the case that there is some guarantee for initial years premium or over all but then it will be so low that its not even worth considering.

A simple thumb rule is that anything beyond Bank FD returns will always carry some level of risk otherwise why will someone buy FD at all if they can get some guaranteed returns. Nothing comes free in this world, there is always some risk involved.

Watch this video and don’t get fooled by the agents selling ULIPS plan:

5# This is regarding 180% – 250% guaranteed return plan Sir.

Now a days I can see this strange thing with most of the products, that they have started giving “guaranteed returns” with first year premiums.

This has two reasons, people in India like words like “guaranteed” and “secure” especially at times when markets are doing bad, second reason is that they can use these words at the time of promoting their products, I get a lot of calls which start with “Hello sir, this call is regarding 250% guaranteed return plan sir, Can i explain it to you?”

I can sense that sense of pride in the caller’s voice clearly when they say this even though they dont know whom they are talking too.

My first question to them is “Just tell me the IRR of this policy” and then starts the process of “wait sir, let me transfer the call to my senior” and then “wait sir, Let me transfer the call to the regional manager and CEO” who have no idea what is IRR!!! Finally

6# I will give you 10% of Cash back on premiums paid.

ULIPs and an endowment plans have very high commissions in the first year [See a case of miss-selling in ULIP]. So agents lure customers by giving back some part of their commissions back, in this way they get more clients and more money overall.

Don’t fall in trap of this. Many agents also offer to pay your premiums for 1 yr so that you fall into the trap and take the policy.

7# Money doubling in three years

This is again based on past performance, ask for the average rate of return over long term and anything above 15-16% should look unrealistic. Many agents tell the illustration by taking 20% or as high as 30% as return, they will show your last 5 yrs data when this has actually happened, but its not a right thing for 2 reasons.

First reason is that as per IRDA they are supposed to show you illustration with 6% and 10%, nothing other than this. Ask the agent to explain why they are showing you anything other than 6% or 10%. The other reason is that 20% and 30% are not realistic returns from equity in very long run, you should not expect more than 12-15%.

see this article which explains what are the realistic long term returns from Equity

8# You also get Free Insurance and Tax Benefit.

“Free”, we love this word. You can see that even I have used this word at the top of the page right hand side of this page to lure visitors to subscribe to this blog. It works in most of the cases.

There is nothing called as “Free Insurance”, most of the investors do not understand how insurance works and what are the terminologies, they don’t know that there is something called as “mortality charges” which we have to pay as cost of Insurance.

Apart from this agents also stress on tax saving part which is not something which is unique to those products. We have tax savings on different products anyways.

Dont forget to grab your Free Ebook by Subscribing to this blog by Email or RSS.

9# These are most bought product in the market and have good returns.

Now this is vicious circle, ULIPs are around 70-80% of the products sold by Life insurance companies these days, the reasons are simple. They are explained by agents in such a way that things looks so rosy that customers feel its a worth buying product.

So agents pitch these products to other investors and then they feel “if everyone is doing it then it should be right thing“, far from the actual and real truth. Common sense is not common, so don’t do what others are doing just blindly, think about it yourself, evaluate it.

You should rather be doing what very less people do. Buy Term Insurance which is not even 1-2% of policies sold 🙂 .

10# Low NAV of a NFO from mutual funds

Most of the NFO’s pay very heavy commissions to agents. This is the reason agents tell investors that they should invest in this mutual funds because they will get more units. Even Investors confuse NAV of mutual funds as share price of a company.

At the end its fund performance which should matter and not NAV number, truly speaking we should request IRDA to ban publishing NAV numbers. Some agents also lure investors saying that they should buy low NAV mutual funds because they will get more units and then more dividend as dividend is paid per unit basis.

This is true but again at the end investor will not benefit as dividend is nothing but their own money.

11# Readers Contribution

Add a comment telling how agent tried miss-selling a product to you and I will add it here :). You can also share any incident small or big.

Readers Tip, How to reduce Misselling:  One of the readers “Jagbir” has suggested an excellent idea for IRDA to curb miss-selling:  As per Jagbir, “Agents must get commission only after customer feedback, If customer is not satisfied with the agent suggestion or his way of selling, they can give the feedback and then agent commission will not be paid “.

What do you guys think about this ? Please comment ..

Conclusion

India financial markets have two main issues

High commissions for agents:

Because of high commissions, agents tend to go beyond limits and start unethical selling. Apart from this lot of sales pressure, pressure of meeting targets force agents to achieve the target by hook or crook. IRDA should finally come up with some rule where they remove the commissions on the products.

Low awareness and understanding from investors:

Finance Industry has very smart people at higher level, CEO, Relationship managers, advisers and everyone. they are smart people. they understand human psychology. They know Indian public more than Indian public knows themselves. They know what words to use when and how to divert our minds, our thinking.

Why do they come up with “Guaranteed return products” when markets are low?

That the the perfect and the most right time for everyone to enter Equity, but companies know we are afraid of losing, we don’t like losses, we have lesser risk appetite and then all the Jeevan Astha and Jeevan Nishchay and other Secured products like RGF will pop up.

Most of the NFO’s will come in the bull markets and when markets are already up because that is the time we are charged up and ready to bet our home on anything, that is the time when we have to avoid those things.

So finally avoid the trap, ask questions, doubt everything!!

I would like to hear if anything like this has happened with you did some agent every tried some tactic to missell a product to you. Please share your experience and let others know what happened with you.

List of Different Asset Classes for Investing

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Below is the list of different Asset classes one can consider for investing in Indian markets. For building a successful balanced portfolio one has to understand different asset classes and as per their risk appetite, one has to build his/her portfolio so that it’s optimal from his risk return point of view. In this post you will look at different asset classes and their sub categories with the risk potential. This is not an exhaustive list of categories, however it covers most of them. See the Chart Below

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Readers who are reading it in Email can see the chart here or visit blog article

Points to Remember

  • The above chart does not contain exhaustive list of products and asset classes. See What is Asset Allocation
  • REIT and REMF are yet to come to India, they are not there in market yet
  • Mutual funds classification is not complete. There are different ways to classify mutual funds, the one I have shown is one of the way. Here is the list if good Equity Funds and Debt oriented Mutual funds

Comments! I am sure I missed out somethings in this chart, please suggest me something I can add.

Top 5 things you should do in 2010

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Look around, the world is lovely and bright
Look inside, understand yourself and you’ll see new light
Follow your dreams, follow your heart
Do everything that fills you with delight

Wish All the readers a Happy New Year

In this short post we will see what are te things you should make sure you have completed . We will actually see the points you should keep in mind through the older posts only . Take it as a guide for what you have to do in coming year if you have not done .

New readers can look at Archives to find out Old articles categorised by Month and Category

Important Points

  • Make sure you have adequate life cover , Calculate how you can calculate your Insurance cover and then take a good Term Plan to cover your self . It is extremely important .
  • Open your PPF account if you have not done it yet , I know its tough to take action , but there is no alternative 🙂 .
  • Make sure you understand the concepts and importance of Debt and Equity , understand the importance of Asset Allocation . Understand that Equity is extremely risky in Short term and Debt is extremely risky in long term.
  • Make sure you don’t buy products which you do not understand. This is important , Don’t get into wrong products . doing nothing is a better thing then doing wrong things . Learn from this blog and other blogs , read before you do . don’t do before you read . This is the common mistake . Read some Tips in Personal Finance .
  • Share, We cant grow unless you share things. 5 ready to learn, less knowledgeable people are better than 1 Albert Einstein. When you share links, tell your friends about this blog, Give your comments in articles, There is conversation happening and that leads to more ideas, disagreements , which are the essential things in life to grow . Do more of it . If you are silent reader , I can understand that you don’t like to talk much , but occasionally come in and say how you feel about the idea , put 2 lines , that’s enough .

What I Wish for in 2010

All the right decisions we can make in life are “simple” and “extremely tough” to take. We get confused because of lots of choices and the simplicity of products. It does not fit with our complicated environment these days.  All the wrong decisions we take in life are easy to take , looks good to us at first moment and hence give an impression that they are great and worth taking. Same thing happens in our financial lives . Simple products like Term Plans , SIP in Mutual funds look too easy and simple and hence make us feel that there is some thing wrong with them , We think that how can they be so simple and so powerful, and when we see them in comparison with complicated products like ULIP’s and money back plans, they make us feel like we are doing some thing wrong by buying something which not much people buy.  More than 80% Insurance p9licies sold in India are ULIP’s, Just because 80% people do it , It does not mean they are right product for you . Think and judge your self . Just like the top of the ladder is never crowded in any profession , the same way the best products is not the one which is most sought after . Don’t let 2010 be a year when you make the same mistakes which you have done earlier in life . Making mistakes is one of the greatest gift , Repeating them is the biggest curse . So make a mistake, don’t repeat it 🙂 .

I am not a religious person and I am yet to discover if I am a spiritual one either , but there is some thing inside me which asks me to wish for each and ever reader of this blog that he/she should be more educated , more empowered with the psychology of how to succeed in Financial Planning . I feel like this blog is a platform where any new person can come , learn , discuss the ideas and one day he/she can become his/her own financial planner , who is capable of taking all the right decisions one should be making , you don’t need to depend on anyone , neither this blog nor me , you can be your own master and together we can and we will do it . It might take some time , but its going to happen . I know .

I thank you all for the great support and motivation you have provided to make this blog one of the best financial planning blog in the country today. Happy And Prosperous New year to you and your Family .

Manish

Comments , Give me suggestions on how I should take this blog in 2010 and what are the different things we can do on this blog . You are a part of this Family and your views matters .

Updates

  1. The blog completes 2 yrs
  2. Monthly Pageviews are now touching 70,000 per month
  3. 800+ comments in last 30 posts in less than 3 months

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Last moment tax planing in 30 minutes

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Just in case you have not done your tax planning for this year and you are in a rush of doing it for providing documents proof to your employer, I will tell you how you can quickly do your tax planning at the last moment. First of all it’s not advised that you wait for last minute for your tax planning investments but now if you are late, let’s see how you should plan for your investments at the last minute to save your taxes. We will also discuss in this short article what are the things you should not do in hurry.

Don’t get mad about tax saving: If you have short term Commitments and can’t afford to lock your money for long term it’s better you do not put money in Tax saving Instruments. You should never do Investments just for tax savings. I have personally not invested for much tax saving this year apart from my company PF and Insurance. I have short term commitments and I cannot afford to lock my money for another 3 yrs. So I better pay tax on the part which I could have invested. There is no point in locking my money and then again running around for personal loan or credit from Friends and Family when need arises.

Life Insurance: Make sure you have adequate life insurance cover. If not, take a term insurance for amount of the cover your are short of. Protection is the first step of successful Financial planning. Take a Term Plan from two Insurers. Look at how to calculate your Insurance requirement. The cheapest Term plan at this moment in market is iTerm from Aegon Religare.

Planning for Long Term Goals: Make a list of goals for long term like Retirement, Child Education, Child Marriage etc (Anything thing with a target date of 5+ yrs). For these goals you can invest in Tax saving Instruments. If the goal is extremely critical and you are not a risk taker then the best thing would be Tax saving Fixed Deposits. If you can take some amount of risk, you can invest your money in ELSS Mutual funds (here is a list of good Equity Mutual funds). For goals which are 10+ yrs away, you can also put partial money in PPF. Investors who have sound knowledge of Markets movement and can spend time and efforts on switching can go for Low cost ULIP’s (see Wealthsurance and Aegon religare). Short term ULIP investing is a BIG and BOLD No No!!

Health Cover: The next thing you should target is your Health Insurance. Better take a Family Floater Plan for your Family  and  the premium will be exempted under Sec 80D up to max of 15,000.

Short Term Goals: If you have any short term goals then do not put money in any tax saving instrument, rather put money in non-tax saving instruments like Plain FD (See, how to find best FD), Debt Oriented Mutual funds, Avoid Equity as far as possible if you are not a risk taker.

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So the hierarchy of your products should be like this

  • Life Insurance
  • Health Insurance
  • Long Term Investment products like ELSS and PPF
  • Medium term Investment Products like tax saving FD

What you should not Invest in?

Another Important Point is what no to do in Hurry? So here are some of the things you need to remember

  • Do not invest in ULIPS in hurry, the last 3 months of financial year is the time when Agents will give their best performance in luring away investors. Don’t listen to their stories of India Shining and other bakwaas, if you don’t understand the product and you do not have skills to manage ULIP’s. Same applies to ULPP’s or any other market linked products.
  • Do not invest in Endowment or Money back plans for tax savings. Your Father, your Grandfather or your Uncle might push for it but investing in those policies is a long term commitment and just for saving tax this year you cant invest in those policies.
  • Evaluate your risk appetite again and then take decision. Most of the people can take risk and their situation allows them but they don’t take risk. On the other hand there are people who’s situation does not allow taking risk, but still they take the risk. They confuse between Willingness to take risk Vs Ability to take risk.

Conclusion

Tax saving should be done at the start of year always so that we dont take wrong decisions in hurry. But if you are late you can take some logical decision and still do your tax planning.

Please share your ideas about what other instruments can be used for long term tax savings. Let other know how early tax saving decision has helped you.

Review of Stockezy.com , A Social Investing Community

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Ever thought of a Social Investing community website in India . I am glad to review Stockezy.com today which has grown to a popular stock investing community in last couple of months in India . Stockezy.com is one of the best online places you can get education, stock tips , great links for other financial resources (mainly stock market related) . Let me point out main features of this website which you can use to increase your knowledge and also contribute . There are different sections in Stockezy , Below is a short description of each of them .

Stock Picks : You can stock picks from members on different stocks in indian stock market . With every stock pick there are important things like  target price , target date , Stop Loss . There are picks for Buy and Sell both .  Link

Opinions : This is a section where you are read opinions of different members on variety of topics from market outlook , stock movement , Short term view , Long term views about something . In short this is a place where you can get to know what a person feels about a topic . There are different categories for opinions so that its easy to find out some opinion . Link

Questions & Answers : You can consider this as a forum for questions and answers , If you have any question on some stock , market direction or any other similar thing , you can just post a question and anyone who wishes can reply to your question . You can see it as a thread which discusses some idea . Link

Portfolio Tracker : This is one of my favorites , this is a place where you can test your investing skills and buy and sell in real time, Its a great platform to test your abilities before you enter the market . You can get your statement which shows your Profit/loss and all the transactions summary in short . So if you are a new investor who is going to enter the market , its an ideal place to test out your strategies and skills . Link

Share Links : This is a very nice addition recently on Stockezy.com . You can view this as a twitter of Financial Markets . Different Financial blogger post links to variety of topics here with different categories . Even I post my personal Finance posts there .  Link

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Other Features

  • You can subscribe to RSS feeds of any particular sub features like  Stock Picks | Opinions | Answers .
  • You can watch out different top traders for different Time frames like Top day trader , Top medium term Investors etc
  • Gives you a list of Most active investors and top pickers , which gives you a good idea of whom to listen and whom not .

Stockezy is a fast growing Investors community with close to 1 million page views a month , You can get lots of great bloggers like Nooresh Merani , Arun the Stock Guru and other famous bloggers.  If you wanted a platform to show your investing skills , Stockezy is the place you belong to . Register to Stockezy using This Link

Further Improvements

There are couple of things which can make its much better . they are

  1. An online  technical Analysis Software system which users can use if they wish . There are many investors who like to technically analyse a stock and hence its a much have .
  2. More data on Derivatives segment . there is lack of quality data on F&O segment , so it can add the segment for that .

How should you use Stockezy ?

There are different ways you can use Stockezy.com , if you are new to stock market and want to learn how to to trading , learn the basics, you should join it and start doing the mock trading and see your porformance over a period of time , there are so many great people with knowledge out there who can give you some wisdom , listen to them . Before that you would like to read my ebook on How a newcomer should start in Stock Market .

Comments, Have a look at it and tell me if you like it , Feel free to give your negative and positive feedback .

Disclaimer : I am part of Stockezy.com Bloggers Network

Till what age should you take your Life Cover ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

From some last some days I am getting queries that some Life Insurance Policies are not giving cover for more than 65 yrs of age or for Tenure of more than 25 or 30 yrs and why they dont want to take those policies because they want a cover till 70 or 80 yrs of age . So People are confused on which one to take. They generally want a cover which covers them till 70-80  yrs of age or sometimes whole life . Let us talk about till what age should you target your Life cover generally .

Why do we buy Life Cover ?

Now lets talk Logic and think logically , no expertise required here . What is Life Insurance and How much Life cover do you need ?  Life cover is to cover the risk of early Death of bread winner and for hedging the risk of loss of income due to the sudden unexpected death of the main earning member . So ideally Life Insurance cover should only be there till the retirement of the earning member , because anyways after that he/she wont be earning , so no one will financially dependent on that person . You only think , If you are 70 yrs old , do you need Insurance cover ? Who is dependent on you by that age , generally ? How many of you are dependent on someone who is in that age ? Are you ?

Hence if a person age is 30 and he is planning to get retired at age of 58 . He requires a policy which covers him till age 58 , not more .. See the Diagram Below …

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So what do we learn ?

Life Insurance is in other terms a replacement of your potential Future earnings. Hence, Insurance amount which your dependents gets should be a substitute of all the amount the bread winner is going to earn in his life time and provide for needs of his Family. Therefore when you are near the retirement and  if you die, your potential future income  which you were going to bring in the family will be less and hence your Insurance cover at that time should be less . We today have Level Term Insurance where we have the same level of Insurance at that time , which is ok . Note that we also have decreasing life insurance cover and Increasing Life Insurance cover also . So lets see the main points we learnt here

  • We need High Insurance cover at the start of the Career when have no Investments . Look at iTerm Term Insurance from Aegon Religare and Some Tips while taking Term Insurance
  • We need to be covered till the time we want  retirement .
  • The day we earn enough money which our dependents need even if you die , you can get rid of your Insurance and then you don’t need Insurance .
  • So there is no point in having Insurance after your Retirement , unless your intention is to get a big sum of money at the end even if it does not matter much .
  • This is the main reason why Insurance companies also give Cover till age 65 because that’s the time most of the people on earth get retired anyways .
  • Whole Life p0licies does not make any sense apart from the fact that they provide pension which is very low. See review of Jeevan Tarang Policy from LIC to understand more on this .
  • You should have sound Investment Planning so that when you reach your retirement you have grown your Huge Corpus .
  • Insurance at the end is the hedge against your risk of loosing the earning Potential , its just not a tool to make money on your death .
  • Use Insurance as Protection not for Saving , Dont just invest for Tax saving !!

Final Take Away

You have to Notice some imporant point here , Dont take the above diagram by heart and assume that your Insurance cover goes down every year , It can happen that because of other commitments you might have to increase your cover . The main takeaway from this article is that at the end of your career (your retirement life) you should have enough investments and money so that you dont need Life Insurance. Also there can be exception cases where this logic does not apply , we are talking a general case here and not a specific one 🙂 .

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Questions/Doubts ? Share your comments please