Max New York Life launches SMART Steps - Unit linked Child Plans

To facilitate your child’s aspirations and goals Max New York Life, today launched SMART Steps - Range of Unit Linked Child Plans. Higher education, marriage, financial security of our children are some of the most important milestones that we all save for. However, with rising cost of living in today’s world, simple saving instruments would not be enough to meet the aspirations for one’s children. SMART Steps Unit Linked Child Plans are a range of smart plans that facilitate planning for children’s needs and provide financial protection.

The features of the plan are as below.



Complete surety for a secure future for your child

In case of unfortunate event of death of the parent (the life insured) the nominee/beneficiary is entitled to receive guaranteed 100% sum assured immediately. In addition, Max New York Life will continue to operate the Unit Account until maturity of the policy. All future premiums are funded to the policy by Max New York Life on behalf of the life insured until policy maturity thereby ensuring that the purpose for which the policy was originally purchased is accomplished.

The SMART Steps “Plus” plan has an additional inbuilt feature of Family Income Benefit, which ensures that the child’s recurring needs are taken care of by way of extra yearly payouts (5% of the Sum Assured) on the death of the parent (life insured) for rest of the policy term. A lump sum payout would also be given in the event of life insured being diagnosed with any of the 10 Dread Diseases covered under the policy.

Choice of Protection Levels & Flexibility

SMART Steps Range of plans - SMART Steps, SMART Steps Plus and SMART Steps Single Premium - provide customers the flexibility in financial planning by offering a choice to decide proportion of investment and risk cover.

Investment Flexibility

SMART Steps range of plans offer customers the choice of investing their premium in five investment funds offered by Max New York Life - Secure, Conservative, Balanced, Growth and Growth Super - to suit their risk appetite from investment in low risk asset such as government securities and corporate bonds to the ones investing in high risk assets such as equities. The plan empowers customers to manage their investments by free switching upto 6 times a year. It also offers premium redirection flexibility free of cost upto 3 times a year that enables the customer to proactively manage their investments and redirect their future premiums into new funds of their choice. The plans offer a top-up facility wherein a customer can invest lump-sum money into the policy as and when the funds are available. Liquidity is there by allowing partial withdrawals from the fund value to meet any unplanned expenses.

The Minimum Annual premium allowed in SMART Steps and SMART Steps Plus is Rs.20,000 and in SMART Steps Single Premium it is Rs.50,000. As the customer decides to pay a higher premium, the front end allocation charge reduces.

Gary Bennett, Managing Director & CEO of the company said, “Children’s education is one of the primary reasons for saving in majority of Indian Households. The recently conducted Max New York Life – NCAER India Financial Protection Survey reveals that 85% of Indian Households with children in 0-15 years of age group save for their children’s education. We at Max New York Life are dedicated towards understanding and satisfying our customers’ needs by offering them specially designed products to meet their requirements. SMART Steps child unit linked plan is a product that has been launched as a part of this customer centric philosophy.”

Debashis Sarkar, Director – Marketing, Product Management and Corporate Affairs, said, “The SMART Steps range of Unit Linked Child Plans are targeted at the parents who want to be absolutely sure about a secure future of their children whether they are there or not there. It provides control over uncertainties of life and inflation. With this launch, we now have a customised unit linked product to meet the need of children’s education planning for responsible parent. This further strengthens our comprehensive Unit Linked portfolio for customers with different financial risk profile and at different life stages.”

Max New York Life has sold well over 1.75 million policies with more than Rs. 53,656 crore in sum assured and has an agency force of more than 28,288 agents.