Unit Linked Insurance Plan is a 2-part investment plan that offer benefits of both insurance and investment in a single scheme. In ULIP investment, you get the benefit of life insurance and wealth creation with many other added advantages. These added advantages of ULIP make it quite lucrative and a good investment tool for the long term. Not only this but with ULIP, you also get to stay in line with the market growth and inflation by investing in the market funds as per the market trends. In order to stay at the top of your investing game, you need to understand the technicality related to the fund switching in ULIP plans.
In this article, we will discuss some common questions like - What is Fund Switch in ULIP, how does switching funds work in ULIP, and other important details related to ULIP investment management, fund switching charges, and the allocation of free switching that you get monthly or annually.
What is fund switch in ULIP?
ULIP is a smartly planned and well-organized modern investment tool. Among many attractive features, one of the most important ones is the fund switch. This feature gives you the hold over your chosen funds and allows you to manage your money as you please by switching across your funds depending on the market performance.
What does fund switch mean?
Fund switching is a part of ULIP where the policyholder gets the liberty to select and invest in the funds of their choice. They can do so to maximize gains or to take a safer option with little gains as a long-term investment motive. This is how you get a hold of your investment and manage it as per your preference. As a policyholder, fund switching allows you to tailor and control your ULIP investment as required for your financial goals. Not only this, but if you foresee a risk, you can easily manage it on your own. Basically, fund switching also gives you the individual capability of risk management of your ULIP investment.
Features of Fund switching
- Freedom of management of ULIP investment.
- Risk management capability
- Ability to manage funds to maximize gains and reduce losses.
- Select funds of your choice.
How does switching funds work?
The first thing that you should know about fund switching is that most of the ULIP Investment policies allow a limited number of monthly or annual fund switching only. Exceeding this number can incur more charges per switch that you make. To understand what fund switch means, let’s understand what happens when you get a ULIP policy.
With every ULIP Policy that you opt for, you get the option to choose your funds. Once you have chosen the funds and the policy is active, you will make money from the investment part, based on where the money is invested or which funds you have opted for. You get various fund options in ULIP policy like Bonds, Debts, Equities, Hybrid, stocks, etc. Now, suppose you have invested in stocks and you feel like the stock market will fall in the next month, a ULIP allows you to take the money out of the stocks and invest it in some or various other funds that you believe will perform better.
Once the insurer clears things on their end, the fund switching takes effect. With online systems, things have become much easier now. Fund switching may be processed the same day or might take a few days based on the insurer and other factors!
