Retirement Plans are specially designed to meet your post-retirement needs such as medical and living expenses so that you enjoy your life after retirement. It helps you accumulate your savings for a long period to ensure a peaceful future life. A pension plan helps you to put aside part of your savings during your working tenure to create financial support post-retirement so that you can have a financially sound after retirement life when the probability of income sources drying down is high. In a retirement plan, the insured can choose his retirement age and also the duration for which he will pay regular premiums to build the corpus. Once the insured reaches the retirement age then he starts getting regular pension for the period as chosen by him. The Corpus that was built by paying premiums during vesting age is used to generate regular income/pension/annuity post reaching the retirement age.
These pension plans can be further divided into 3 categories:
Traditional Pension Plans:
These pension plans are known as traditional pension plans because the premiums you pay are invested in conservative options like government and debt securities, Comercial Papers etc. which are considered to be safe. These plans are offered by various life insurance companies. Here the returns on the money vary from low to moderate but safe.
These type of pension plans comes with various options – a simple pension plan, a pension plan with life cover, a pension plan with immediate annuity payments and a pension plan with deferred annuity payments.
Unit Link Pension Plans:
Unit Link Pension plans are for those who have a more aggressive outlook or high-risk appetite. Unit link pension plans invest a substantial portion of the premiums in high return-high risk investments such as stocks, bonds & other non-government securities. These plans provide opportunities for you to choose from different risk profiles – low, medium and high depending upon your risk-bearing appetite. You can switch between plans during the policy term at your discretion, subject to certain terms and conditions. Historically, investments held for the long term in stocks have given lucrative returns.
National Pension Scheme (NPS):
NPS is a pension program implemented by the Government of India. It acts as a social security scheme aiding employees of all sectors to the age of 60 years. During this period, they can invest in the NPS and withdraw up to 60% of their corpus once they turn 60 years. The balance would be returned as a pension for life in the form of annuity payments. NPS invests premiums collected from members in four types of asset classes - Equity, Corporate debt, Government Bonds and Alternative Investment Funds – with equity exposure limited to a maximum of 75%. The scheme offers safety by investing in relatively safer instruments. NPS also offers flexibility allowing investors to switch based on their specific needs, receiving a lump sum limited to 60% of corpus accumulated at the age of 60.
Here’s why you should start planning for your retirement today.
Benefits of Retirement Plans:
Pension Plans provide guaranteed regular income for life. For people who dont have pensionable job, pension plans come handy. These plans help them to put portion of their savings aside to take care of their financial needs post retirment.
There are Tax benefits also in pension plans. The savings made in pension plans and NPS qualify for the following benefits under the Income Tax Act: