Hornmerchant's BLOG

It is well established that separation of 'Financial Advice' and 'Financial Product Sales' is a great idea to avoid conflict of interest. Mixing both, that means advice from a product seller, may not always be unbiased. Paying fees for advice only, (where adviser gets paid by the client only and won't earn any commission or remuneration for the products he /she recommends) indeed is a great idea logically. Sometimes (rather most of the times!) we humans don't behave logically. I see three types of people: Majority - reactive people,  who need to be chased to do get them buy and renew their Insurance policies or start and keep the SIP going;  Minority - people who get the financial plan and advice by paying fees and then get too busy with their work that it keeps them postponing the implementation of plan / advice for eternity;   Rarity - proactive people who plan and implement meticulously. Financial Advisers add little value to the rare proactiv...

There are already plenty of articles written on ULIP vs MF.  This an FAQ. This became further more VFAQ since Long Term Capital Gain (LTCG) Tax was (re)imposed on Equity Mutual Funds. This question started when Life Insurance policies became Investment vehicles more than Risk management instruments. But now Mutual Funds have started offering Life Insurance! This kind of ‘cross-border invasion’ has created all the more confusion. Then what is the purpose of this one more article about the same matter? What more or different I have to say about this Frequently Asked and Widely Answered Question? I wish to talk about the practical (relevant) and less discussed points. End of the day they are the most important. Well, however, for the relevance of the topic it may be inevitable to repeat some things you already know or what other hundreds of articles have already spoken about a lot. PERFORMANCE: Let’s begin with first things first. The Returns…Performance. This is at the top...