Upper limit for LIC's new endowment plan reduced to 50 years from 55 years

State-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has revised the upper limit for purchasing its new endowment plan from 55 years to 50 years, according to a communication reviewed by Business Standard. 

The revision is effective October 1, 2024, ‘LIC New Endowment Plan-914’ is a participating endowment plan that offers the dual benefit of protection-cum-savings plan. The minimum entry age is 8 years and it comes with both death and maturity benefits.  

An endowment plan is a type of life insurance policy that provides life cover as well as a maturity benefit. The life cover component provides a lump sum payout to the nominee in the case of the policyholder’s demise, while the maturity benefit component provides a fixed payout given at the time of maturity. An email query sent to LIC on the same did not elicit response till the time of going to press. According to LIC’s website, it has six endowment products: LIC’s Single Premium Endowment Plan, LIC’s New Endowment Plan, LIC’s New Jeevan Anand, LIC’s Jeevan Lakshya, LIC’s Jeevan Labh Plan and LIC’s Amritbaal.

 

All these products have been modified according to  per the new surrender value guidelines effective from October 1, 2024. These are part of 32 products and riders modified by the life insurer so that they are compliant with the surrender value norms. “Out of these products, the life insurer has revised premium rate across products, except LIC’s Amritbaal Plan, by average 8-10 per cent and the sum assured for LIC’s New Endowment Plan, LIC’s New Jeevan Anand and LIC’s Jeevan Lakshya has been increased to Rs 2 lakh from Rs 1 lakh earlier,” the source said. “Meanwhile, the private players who have introduced endowment plans have revised premium rates only by 6-7 per cent on an average,” the source added.

“Endowment policies could be either participating where the bonus is not guaranteed or non-participating based on the investment experience of the insurer. In case of non-par, the guaranteed additions will be there. Large majority of LIC’s policies are participating where variable bonus is applicable. But, there are some non-par as well,” an insurance expert said. Recently, LIC has introduced a Single Premium Group Micro Term Insurance Plan. 

It is a Non-Participating, Non-Linked, Group, Pure Risk, Life Micro Insurance product.  The plan is specially designed to provide simple, flexible and affordable life insurance to cater to the needs of Finance Institutions including Micro Finance Institutions, Co-operatives, SHGs and NGOs to cover their members/lonees. It also addresses the essential insurance requirement of members of unorganised groups, employer-employee groups and other homogeneous affinity groups.