PARK Financial Advisors

Retail investors could explore real estate through REITs or REMFs. Equity is the best investment option as far as the returns go. However, it is also high on risk and could drown those caught when the tide turns. This is why it is important to diversify across various investment options. A less risky proposition is real estate, which also offers good returns.

There is a great joy in receiving money and if it comes on its own, we feel elated! Whether what we received was already rightfully our own, becomes secondary to the pleasure of the receipt. Insurance companies and dividend-distributing mutual funds make use of this feeling of joy to innovate products that appeal psychologically rather than financially to the consumer.

The article discusses whether money back policies sold by insurance companies adds value to the consumer.

The concept of medical insurance needs no introduction. However it is amazing how few people are actually adequately insured for medical care of themselves and their families! This is probably to do with several myths about medical insurance that people harbour. We debunk some of the common myths surrounding medical insurance in this article.

How many of you would use a mobile phone predominantly as a calculator? Surprisingly, in the world of financial products and services, this is exactly what many unwary customers end up doing.

Driven by higher commisions,the agent will sell ULIP as a great investment plan, which also provides insurance. Never mind, that it only provides lip service to insurance, just as a phone without SMS or address book would be useless as a mobile phone! Also, never mind that there are several much better investment plans available in the market (like good scientific calculators) at a much lower price than the ULIP.

Akshata and Vidhan Kulkarni’s joy at getting their daughter admitted to kindergarten was tempered by a sudden realisation that they needed to start planning financially for her future.

In this article we evaluate the concepts around the child plans available in the market today. In summary, the child plans available today fare poorly on both the insurance and the investment parameters, as compared to alternatives available in the market.

ULIPs or Unit Linked Insurance Plans offered by a majority of fund houses are insurance plans which provide the benefit of capital appreciation by investments in various schemes in debt and equity markets. Although this sounds like a good idea, one feels the pinch after a couple of years when the high costs associated with such structured products bleeds you dry. “More complex the product, higher is the associated cost” as ULIPs typically have a lot of hidden costs associated with them which no salesman will tell you.

To an average individual, an ‘insurance’ policy is something you get returns from, not something that insures your life. Returns generated, flexibility of investment options and plans are talked about as if they are the essence of insurance. Unfortunately this is far from the truth – insurance still is very much about, and only about, covering your life! In the long run, relying on an insurance product to give you returns could be fairly counterproductive and even value-destroying.

We often end up with high priced insurance policies like ULIP’s when seeking a way to build up a corpus for planning our milestones. This is mainly because the so called ‘free insurance cover’ termed by many agents grabs our attention at the very first instant. However, there are no such things as free lunches as ULIP’s have mortality charges which are deducted from the fund value.

One of the reasons why working outside of India was so attractive was the fact that exchange rate of the Rupee was very weak compared to its purchasing power; so a lot of NRIs would profitably earn in US Dollars or Dirhams and send money back to India.

Earlier the movement of the Indian rupee was typically one-way: downwards. Now, however, the situation has altered. The Indian economy is going strong and India is sitting on large foreign exchange reserves (> $250 billion). In effect, while the Indian currency is expected to remain jumpy, the direction of the jump cannot be predicted accurately.

The process of investment into India has progressively been made simpler and in many cases, no permission from the RBI before investing in India. We look at some of the issues which NRIs face in investing in the country and the process of investing in the country.