Hi JagoInvestor Team,

I am planning to purchase a term insurance plan. I met a LIC agent recently and discussed with him my queries regarding the plans offered by LIC. I asked him a query regarding various options of payment. He told me that for first premium I have to pay him either in cash or cheque or draft in favor of LIC. There is no option to pay through credit card or any other means for first premium.

From next years onwards, I can pay through any channel available on LIC like online payment through credit card or netbanking, etc. I was confused as why would LIC make an exception for first premium or was he trying to fool me because rest all insurers support online payment even for the first premium. I wanted to pay him through credit card as I don’t have liquid cash required for my first premium and my credit card offers me interest free period for next three months. I have always paid my credit card dues on time and there was never a single instance of delayed payments. But due to some huge expenses in last 3-4 months for house renovation and other things, I didn’t have enough liquid cash for this investment.

I am not going to select some other plan due to this reason and I can arrange the required cash for this plan if I finalized it. Right now, I am considering other plans too like HDFC click2protect, ICICI icare and SBI shield. But I am curious to know that whatever the agent was saying is actually true or he was just trying to deceive me for some additional commission.

Regards

Amit Gupta