Reliance Life Insurance, one of India’s leading private life insurance company shared its plans to launch a new pension insurance plan sometime in October 2012. Reliance Life is in the process of obtaining the approval for this product from IRDA.
Earlier IRDA had issued guidelines stating that life insurance companies have to offer a guaranteed return of 4.5 percent due to which almost all the life insurance companies were pondering whether or not to offer a pension product. But after the regulator revised the product guidelines for pension plans and removed the guarantee component, insurers have gone back to the drawing board and started planning a pension product as part of their offerings.
“We have filed one accumulation policy with IRDA and are expecting to get approval by this month-end. If everything goes as per our plans, we will be coming up with a new pension plan by next month-end or early November,” Reliance Life President and Executive Director Malay Ghosh told PTI.
Currently the only pension plan available in the market is offered by LIC. Industry experts have shared their concern time and again of excess exposure on one life insurance Company. Few life insurers have said that they have filed the pension products with IRDA and are awaiting approval. The pension market which has been down for more than a year now is showing some signs of revival.
