It is nice to have an opinion. Does not mean you should be carried away by your opinion when you invest or take decisions regarding insurance.

Here are some of the shitty comments that I hear about life insurance….

1. Only 2% of insurance results in death claim – so the writer assumes that 98% of the people have WASTED THE premium paid on Term insurance. This is dangerous. If the insurance industry knew which was the 2% which was going to end up in claims, they would not insure them! thus the profitability would go up! Stupid, stupid argument. You take term insurance so that you get peace of mind. You take term insurance on the bread winner’s life because the family will live. Not because the bread winner will die.
2. 96% of the widows spend the insurance money in 30 months – I have no clue from where such people get the data. In India such data is surely not available. This is in fact a solid reason to say that “Indians are under insured in life insurance for sure”. This is not an argument for not taking any life insurance.
3. Agents get 80% commission – my banker told me that: that might be true for Term insurance. However if you were told that the salary of the salesman was Rs. 10L pa would it mean you would buy insurance? As the commission is based on ‘success’ the salesman gets paid ONLY on days that he does a sale. Assuming you have a fantastic salesman who sells one policy every 3 days, and the average premium is Rs. 8000, and the commission is 60%…how much does the sales man make? 8000 x 10 policies = 80,000×60% = 48000 per month. Honestly, that does not worry me. Far more importantly now you can buy online, and that is free of commission. Stop cribbing. Honestly, I think you are over paid. So what?
4. Most people surrender the life policies: I did too! So what? when a person is 30 he takes a 30 year term plan. Say at 55 he inherits money, his wife gets esop worth a few crores, his son and daughter are settled…and he surrenders the term insurance. I honestly think that is fine. He does not need any insurance. He has met his life goals without his wife having to make the claim. Argument holds no water.
5. Most people SPEND the difference between term insurance and ulip: Bullshit. Complete bullshit. I took term insurance, and have invested my money in equities. Most of the people around me have term insurance and heavy SIP in equities. Spare me this b#@ S@@t.

And then there are people who say claims will not be paid, if the family wants security they should find a job, God will take care of my family,…..and tons of other B…S…

It is fine to have a view or an opinion. Make sure that it does not impact your decisions in life. Decisions in life – what you eat, how you medicate yourself, how you invest should be based on facts. Gather facts from professionals NOT from friends, relatives, journalists, pink papers – those are all one sided. Most of them are NOT based on facts but on anecdotal evidence. Be careful. I did not do this post to bash the writer (I do not care about him) but to tell you that YOU should be careful when you come to conclusions…