HDFC Life Pension’s advertisement promises that your tomorrow will be just as today if you buy its pension plans. Well, tomorrow will surely be as messed up as today if you fall for it. The wise guy in the advertisement has got it all wrong—present and future
HDFC Life’s advertisement on its retirement product HDFC Life Pension has the ‘wise’ guy admonished by a friend for frequently changing his car. He tells the wise guy that after retirement there will be no salary. The wise guy responds that he will have money after retirement as he has purchased the HDFC Life Pension Plan. Taaki kal, bilkul aaj jaisa ho.
The wise guy has got his current priorities wrong with frequent changing of his car. He seems appropriately overweight too. He certainly has got his future messed up with his retirement planning. He would have been better off with putting money in the good old PPF (public provident fund), instead. The press release in the advertisement campaign states that it is targeting the younger audience to change the mindset. Beware of the campaign. If only you listen to your parents or grandparents rather than spending time in front of the idiot box, listening to the hardsell of an insurance company!
Here is math for the wise, overweight guy. The advertisement says that putting Rs5,000 per month for 20 years will earn lifelong retirement pension of Rs11,659 per month (pm). Well, good luck with retirement on Rs11,659 pm after 20 years. The value of that Rs11,659 after 20 years at 9% inflation? Only Rs2,081!
If he only puts Rs5,000 pm in PPF for 20 years (@8.8% pa), he may get lifelong pension of Rs19,045 pm. It is a whopping 64% higher pension amount than what HDFC Life’s slick advertisement offers. We are not even talking of mutual funds here. And if you end up with the HDFC Life Pension plan’s assured benefit of paltry 101% of all premiums, then your lifelong pension will be less than Rs8,000 pm. Thanks, for the misleading ad, cleared by the insurance regulator. By the way, have you seen a similar ad by mutual funds? No. Because mutual funds cannot advertise such promises.
Another version of the advertisement has the ‘wise’ guy chide his wife for spending. He says there are lots of expenses with children, promotion party, vacation, nephew and niece’s admission and renovation. Wife concedes and agrees to think before spending. The punch-line has the husband giving jewelry to his wife and tells her to go ahead with spending. It is because the wise guy has HDFC Life Retirement Plan.
The advertisement may actually be correct in a perverse way! If today’s priorities are messed up, then tomorrow should logically follow it. Taaki kal, bilkul aaj jaisa ho. How true!
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Sujit Menon