Today Update

Health insurance is an insurance product which covers medical and surgical expenses of an insured individual. It reimburses the expenses incurred due to illness or injury or pays the care provider of the insured individual directly. Need for Health Insurance Medicare or medical costs are rising year on year. As a matter of fact, inflation in medicare is higher than inflation in food and other articles. While inflation in food and clothing is in single digits, medicare costs usually escalate in double digits. For an individual who hasn’t saved that much money, arranging for funds at the eleventh hour can be a task. This is particularly daunting for seniors, given that most ailments strike at an advanced age. One way to provide for health-related / medical emergencies is by taking health insurance. Health insurance offers considerable flexibility in terms of disease / ailment coverage. For instance, certain  health insurance plans  cover as many as 30 critical illnesse...

Application Supported by Blocked Amount As the name suggests, when an investor applies for investment in primary market ( Initial Public Offer ) the amount gets blocked in bank account as lien amount and if shares are allotted the amount gets debited from bank account and if the shares are not allotted the blocked amount is released. In old days, besides normal mode of cash or cheque payment along with IPO application, Stock Invest was introduced and was welcomed, but finally it was closed due to misuse of it by scrupulous operators and thus a boon in favor of retail investors has seen premature death. In 2008, SEBI introduces ASBA mode i.e. an Application Supported by Blocked Amount for retail investors. ASBA system ensured that the applicant's money remains in his/her bank account till the shares are allotted. Now it has been extended to corporate investors and HNIs as well (from January 1, 2010, onwards). The mechanism requires the applicant to give an author...

SIP or Systematic Investment Plan is regarded as the most efficient and easy method of investing in equity markets. It has been noticed that investors who put their money in mutual funds via SIP, 1 to 2 years ago, have not received good returns.  The value of total investment for some investors has actually declined in comparison to the original investment.  Several investors have gotten yields that are lower than that offered by a savings bank account. The average two year returns of SIP in December 2016 were 2.88 percent for equity mutual funds. The above does not indicate that SIP method of investments need to be reevaluated. T he very first thing that needs to be cleared is the fact that SIP is not an investment option but just a method of investing.  SIP is similar to recurring bank deposits with the main difference being that SIP is speculative and based on the dynamics in the market while recurring deposits come with fixed term and guaranteed yields. Poor ret...