Over the years, ULIPs have gained notoriety as an investment tool because of its dual benefit of providing a life cover and of creating corpus through market-linked returns.
Let’s find out in this piece how to choose a ULIP plan for your investments.
1. Identify your life goals
Before you start investing, the first step you take is to recognise the reason why you are investing. Make a checklist of your life goals. When you invest in specific goals, your investments are sorted. Determine the amount you need to fulfil this objective. A calculator with basic inflation rate will tell you the estimated funds you need. Based on this amount, you can recognise how much you need to invest in Unit-linked insurance plans to support your expenditure.
2. Assess your risk appetite
Higher the risk, higher the returns. But, taking high risks is not everyone’s forte. Some investors are more involved in capital preservation and steady returns. Your risk apetite depends on your income. If you expect to earn more each year, you can endure risk and allocate funds respectively. Investment products should provide to the changing risk appetite of investors. That’s why ULIPs are one of the favoured investment options available for you, irrespective of your risk appetite. You can invest from low-risk debt funds or balanced funds to high-risk equity funds in ULIPs to meet your investment objectives.
3. Understand the additional charges
Price structure in ULIPs differs from one plan to another. Hence, it is necessary to understand the charges linked with ULIPs before you invest. This will give you a better knowledge of your money that is being invested in multiple funds. Insurance companies deduct a small amount from your premium before putting them in market-linked funds. The amount deducted goes towards different charges like premium allocation charge, mortality charge, fund management charge and others. The overall charges, however, have been capped by IRDAI at 3% of gross yield for policies with a term of up to 10 years. And 2.25% for policies with more than 10 years term. The good part is that some new-age ULIPs have zero premium allocation charge and policy administration charge. Also, some are even returning the mortality charges on the maturity of the policy, making ULIPs more economical.
4. Assess the flexibility of your investment
Your investments should be effective and flexible so that they can be customised as per your need and risk appetite. The structure of ULIPs is such that it allows you to customise your life insurance plan as per your life purpose, needs and risk appetite. ULIP investment will allow you to select your premium payment option to be either monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly. This provides you with the adaptability to make small contributions every month in a disciplined manner instead of investing a large amount annually. ULIPs also provide the option to swap between the equity or debt funds to capitalise on market fluctuations.
These tips can help you make better investment decisions when you put your capital in ULIPs. With stable and regular investments in ULIPs, you can end up with a large corpus of funds to meet your life goals right on time.


