A common investor desires the investments to grow at least to beat the inflation and if possible, to provide for some real growth of money. It is in search of this real growth that people resort to different types of investment instrumentsfixed deposits in banks, mutual funds, stocks, insurance, and so on. Each of these instruments have a typical nature of its own and one need not search for the same feature(s) in all of them, but the only common thing that an investor looks for in all such instruments is the rate of growth of funds or in simple terms the returns they will be getting out of the investment.
Here in this article, we will concentrate more on insurance as a vehicle of our investment alternatives. Insurance as a financial instrument intends to protect the future earning potential of life and property. So, protection of existing value is the basic purpose of insurance and not the future growth of money. Life insurance provides protection for the already existent earning potential of life. Life insurance policies can be any of the following types-term, endowment, child plan, money back, pension and last but not the least, Unit Linked Insurance Plans (ULIP). |