ANNOUNCEMENT: HDFC Life brings back pension planning

Ludhiana, December 7, 2012:  HDFC Life, one of India’s leading life insurance companies, has announced the launch of two pension plans. HDFC Life Pension Super Plus is a regular premium unit linked plan whereas HDFC Life Single Premium Pension Super is a single premium unit linked plan. .

According to Amitabh Chaudhry, MD and CEO, HDFC Life, “It gives me great pleasure to announce that we are the first private life insurance company to bring back pension plans to customers under the new regulatory regime. Saving for retirement has been an important part of financial planning, which most of us tends to neglect or postpone.”

HDFC Life Value Notes Life Freedom Index, a survey conducted earlier this year to understand the current state of financial planning in urban India, revealed that consumers are skeptical about the adequacy of their financial plans to meet their desired standard of living throughout their lifetime. In fact, only 13% of youth and women are extremely confident that they have adequate retirement planning in place. Though the Wisdom investor segment (45 years and above) scored better in the level of confidence, their percentage stood at only 24%. This reflects that planning for retirement among all customer segments needs significant improvement.

“HDFC Life Single Premium Pension Super and HDFC Life Pension Super Plus are designed to build a sizeable corpus for post retirement income and offer assured vesting value with minimum guarantee benefits,” Chaudhry added. Both the plans offer assured benefit on death and vesting. HDFC Life Pension Super Plus offers assured death benefit of total premiums paid to date accumulated at a guaranteed rate of 6% per annum and an assured vesting benefit of 101% of total premiums paid. HDFC Life Single Premium Pension Super offers assured benefit of 101% of total premiums paid on death and vesting.

HDFC Life has also launched a traditional annuity plan, HDFC Life New Immediate Annuity Plan.As per IRDA’s new guideline, customers need to purchase immediate annuity from the proceeds of the Pension Plan from the same company.

Sanjay Tripathy, Executive Vice President and Head, Marketing, Product and Direct Channel, HDFC Life said, “In India, there has been a paradigm shift in retirement trends and the increase in life expectancy.  Individuals opt for retirement as early as at 40-45 years and go on to live beyond 80-85years. This emerging trend is expected to boost the Annuity market substantially in the next few years. The entry age of our Immediate Annuity Plan ranges from 30-85 catering to the diverse spectrum of customers across allage bands with 11 different annuity options for both individual and joint lives,” Tripathy said.

The minimum purchase price of Annuity is Rs. 2 lakhs. For customers whose purchase price is Rs 2.5 lakhs and above will have the benefit of higher annuity rates.