Philippine American Life and General Insurance Co. (Philamlife) has rolled out two new unit-linked protection products to cater to people who prefer flexible and affordable life insurance coverage without taking a lifetime to pay premium.
The new products—Family Provider and Money Works—seek to build up insurance and savings while addressing the need to pay over a limited period of time, Philam head of marketing Jessica Abaya said in a briefing on Friday.
Family Provider banks on the universal instinct that prioritizes the needs of families while addressing the fear of not being able to complete their insurance payments. Abaya said this would cover, for instance, the needs of the likes of overseas Filipino workers who can choose plans matching the duration of their employment contracts.
Abaya said nine out of 10 Filipinos were afraid of dying and leaving their family to fend for themselves. “With this plan, there is no need to worry about completing payments as the clients can pay for the plan in as short as three, five, seven or 10 years,” she said.
Family Provider is a unit-linked protection plan wherein benefits are linked to returns of one’s chosen investment fund that, in turn, is dependent on prevailing market conditions. Family Provider invests the payments in funds managed by Philam Asset Management Inc. (PAMI) to build the savings or account value. If anything happens to the client, beneficiaries will get the higher value of the account value or life insurance coverage equal to 25 times the yearly payments.
The minimum annual premium for Family Provider is as follows: P100,000 for a three-year pay plan; P50,000 for a five-year pay plan; P50,000 for a seven-year pay plan and P30,000 for a 10-year pay plan.
Money Works, on the other hand, is a savings planner with life insurance coverage. It targets those who want to start saving but do not have the capital to make large long-term investments. It offers the flexibility to invest in as short as five, seven or 10 years for as low as P2,000 a month.
Young people who are not interested in life insurance because they do not have spouses or children yet but are keen on building up their savings will likely find this product appealing, Abaya said.
For a five- and seven-year pay period, the minimum premium is P70,000 a year or about P5,838 a month. For a 10-year pay period, the minimum premium is P50,000 or P4,170 a month while for regular pay, the annual premium is P20,000 or P1,668 a month. It also allows clients to increase their savings anytime and top up premium payments for as low as P1,000.
The premium will be invested in PAMI-managed funds suitable to the client’s risk appetite, whether a purely bond fund, a purely equity fund or a combination.
The life insurance coverage under MoneyWorks will depend on the age and the pay period chosen. A 30-year-old client who chooses a regular pay premium, for instance, can get insurance coverage equal to 25 times the yearly payments.
Abaya noted that over the past 10 years, PAMI’s funds had performed with yearly average growth rates of 9 percent for the bond fund, 18 percent for the balanced (bond and equity) fund and 21 percent for the equity fund. Doris C. Dumlao