Top 10 Features of an Ideal Pension Plan

Retirement represents a milestone in a person’s professional life, where after decades of dedicated work and professional growth, a person finally attains superannuation. This also marks the beginning of a life where people generally prefer sending quality time with the loved ones and look forward to other pursuits that had to be earlier put on the backburner for taking care of life’s responsibilities. However, the absence of a regular monthly paycheck can put a significant stress on your finances and consequently on your savings. What is therefore required is to have a sufficiently viable system in place that offers guaranteed benefits in the form of regular payouts i.e. pension.

When it comes to choosing a pension plan, you must always take an informed decision since it is matter of long term advantages and must come with features that suit your needs and requirements.

So, following are the top 10 features of an ideal pension plan:

1. Coverage scope and terms:

   The nature of retirement benefit and the annuity payouts is generally either immediate of deferred. In the immediate mode, the regular payouts begin soon after plan is purchased (i.e. when the premium payout is done by the subscriber). On the other hand, deferred annuity works in the mechanism of initial accumulation for a fixed number of years (generally up to retirement) and then the subscriber becomes eligible for the benefits. So, the coverage scope of the policy must be favorable for your needs.

2. The duration of the fund build up:

   This feature indicates the number of years for which the policy allows you to build up the fund corpus from which the regular payouts in the form of pension can be made after retirement.

3. The duration of the pension period:

   This is a very basic feature and denotes the time period (in years) after retirement when the subscriber will be entitled to receiving monthly payouts.

4. The main fund coverage:

   This is also known as sum assured and indicates the total coverage for which the subscriber is entitled (in rupees). Before deciding on the pension plan, always make sure to check that the sum assured must offer you and your dependent spouse the guaranteed coverage after retirement.

5. Option of partial withdrawal:

   This is a beneficial feature and ideally, the plan must not have rigid of inflexible terms of withdrawal during the period of fund build up. This feature can allow you to withdraw a particular percentage of the main corpus in the event of an emergency or requirement.

6. The minimum assured amount:

   This is a very crucial feature and entitles you to be aware of the amount that the insurer will provide as annuity benefit after the term period is over.

7. Flexibility of investment option:

   The annuity instrument that the plan provides must ideally offer you the choice of fund option, especially so if the returns are market-linked.

8. Tax benefits:

   The pension plan that you wish to purchase must be income tax efficient and must allow you the mentioned benefits on tax exemptions as per the relevant sections of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

9. The market value of the plan:

   This indicates the surrender value of the plan i.e. if you wish to surrender the policy before term maturity.

10. Additional benefits:

    The plan must ideally offer additional benefits or riders for coverage of old age related expenses (medical bills, doctor visits etc.). You must choose carefully before opting for a rider as it impacts the payable premiums.

HDFC Life offers the HDFC Life Pension Guarantee Plan – a single premium annuity product that has been formulated for lighting up your golden years financially.

Buy Term plans

Calculate Premium