I got conned into buying a Birla SunLife flexi life ULIP by a Citibank Gold Wealth Management advisor. This fund charges upto 65% in the first year as policy loading fee whereas HDFC charges about 27% and ICICI is supposed to be even lower. The Citibank advisor who advised me cleverly put my name up for 15 years where the fund charges are 65% and hence I suppose her commission as well. If the sam e policy was for 14 years its 53% and clearly I was not given that option. I was not told about the 65% commission at all by my advisor and I was shocked to see that when I saw my statement where units were purchased only for 35% of the premium amount.
This kind of CON job is being purported by a well known global bank Citibank to its premier account customers is disgusting. The insurance industry also needs to come clean in explaining the fund charges to the customer. I’m not sure if IRDA Is doing anything about it.
Basically, lesson learnt, if you want insurance cover go with Term Life plan and go with Mutual funds, bonds for investments. The ULIP guys have lots of hidden charges which they take advantage of with their customers by not explaining anything about it and faking some imaginary returns.
I hope Birla Sun Life is reading some of these and not continuing to commit such heinous acts of cheating the general public at large, in turn diluting the Birla brand.
- A disgrunted customer(Naga Surendran)