Tuesday, September 14, 2010

LIC Wealth Plus Vs. FD

The thing about this plan was the guaranteed NAV of seven years with a maturity of eight years.
I hate to realize though that I already have a plan that guarantees me the highest NAV till maturity, its called FD(fixed deposit). In addition, this product does not carry any market risk plus it does not charge 5% allocation charge, 1% p.a fund management charge and 0.35% p.a. guarantee charge. Now lets see what an FD gives over 8 years:
http://icicibank.com/interest-rates.html
7.75% with the tax savings option
In WP(Wealth Plus), I have excluded the charges for risk covers (death/accident)as FD does not give you risk covers. Thus the two products are now on equal footing to fight for the best returns. Now to beat FD, WP must generate:
(7.75% p.a. +1% p.a + 0.35% p.a.)/(1-5%) = 9.58%

Now, it is pretty much possible that LIC invests all the money in FD and just pockets all the charges. The plan does not promise any minimum equity investment.
http://www.licindia.in/wealth_plus_benefits.html

However, I would like to give the benefit of doubt to LIC. Assuming equities give 16% return and debt gives 7.75%, to give 9.58% return, LIC must invest atleast 22% of the funds in equities.
I have another important piece of puzzle that can help me find the planned amount of equity investments i.e. 0.35% p.a. guarantee charges or in finance terms OPTION PREMIUM for lookback put option. With this thrown in assuming a 40% volatility in Indian equity markets, LIC can only afford to put 2.32% of its funds in equity (to cover the option premium in 0.35% p.a.). If this is the reality, to beat FD, Nifty(5.7K currently) must touch 436K atleast once in next seven years, which is improbable if not impossible.

I am eagerly waiting for the WP NAVs to be made public, so that we know what the LIC fund managers are upto.

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