When the regulators talk about Mis-selling, the first person (and the last person!) who is blamed is the ‘agent’ who comes to collect the Rs. 2000 (or Rs. 200,000) – loosely called ‘agent’ or ‘adviser’ or whatever.

Who creates the market for him (or her)?

To start with it is marketing. They get “influencers” – whatever it is meant by that! So a Virat Kohli is paid in Millions to tweet about a shoe, a taxi service, or whatever. This gets carried to millions of his followers (including me). So at least you have heard it.

Next Marketing gets ad space in all types of media – newspaper, blogs, television,

The newspaper carries an ad saying “Xyz..life insurance launches Term Insurance with Return of Premium” or something like that.

Then there is a television program where a rep of the company talks about ‘Term Insurance with Return of Premium’. The ‘expert’ – he has passed an exam of 40 minutes to be called an expert. Sorry, make it 3 hours. It took me 40 minutes.

The expert talks about Term insurance. Obviously you the viewer think it is ‘Term Insurance with Return of premium’. Obfuscation helps. Calling “Term Insurance with Ret of Premium” is like saying “I eat a lot of vegetables – I had a plate of fries”. Or the difference between pig and pig iron. Or wine and grapes. Sure it is a derivative, but a bad, pathetic terrible derivative. But the job is done.

Then the expert comes and says “you need 10-20 times your income as term insurance.

Now let us take 3 people – a 20 year old student going abroad for higher studies, a 32 year old with 3 dependents – 2 young children and a housewife, and a 54 year old man.

Let us say the student has zero income and his father has taken a Rs. 50L loan (with house as mortgage) to pay his fees for educating him.

Does he need life insurance? well NOBODY NEEDS life insurance. However the dependents do. So if he were to die without completing the course what happens to the parent? who will repay the loan? so there is a need for a term insurance for the son (even though he is not earning) – and if there is a max of Rs. 10L for term insurance, the father should take a “loan repayment insurance” – calling “reducing term insurance” – which will at least repay the loan in case the student dies. It should be ONLY for 5 years – by which time he is expected to finish his education.

Let us say the 32 year old has a challenged sister whom he is taking care of. He has an income of Rs. 12L a year, and has a home loan of Rs. 39L, a car loan of Rs. 4 lakhs, and the people dependent on him INCLUDE wife, 2 children, his sister and his parents. Now how much of insurance does he need? well he needs about Rs. 45L for loan repayment. His wife’s retirement (Rs. 2 crores?), and children’s education (Rs. 1 crore). So he needs 3.45 crores for his life. There is a way that it can be bought.

Let us say the 54 year old man has 2 children in the final year of education, a wife who is a successful doctor, no loans, and having assets of Rs. 20 crores, annual expenses of Rs. 12 L, Income of Rs. 80L (ctc). Well, clearly he needs no insurance.

If you heard the ‘expert’ who said nil for non-earners, you would have said ZERO for the student, Rs. 1.2 crores for the 32 year old and Rs. 8 crore for the 54 year old.

So go and LEARN how much you need, how RoP is to be avoided, …and then buy from the cheapest. If Max life is cheaper than Icici or Kotak or Hdfc or…..don’t succumb to the big names. All of them will play the games as per their strength. Your strength lies in playing it to your strength.