Don't be misled by brand HDFC. Review on HDFC Life Insurance

The HDFC SLIC is a real misfit in the HDFC group, where one usually finds all the companies have professionally grown & run without the backing & lineage of any group or family. I was a policy holder since 2002 & imagine I had to foreclose my term policies due to extremely poor service quality. The company incl their Mumbai customer relations is so bad that they donot have any time to look into the problems even if the customer notifies problems months in advance before renewal premiums are due. I realised what will be the fate of my family if I am not around with such a company, which I blindly trusted based on my faith in brand HDFC based on my Housing/Banking & Mutual fund relationship. They have opened fit for nothing offices all over the country, where they donot do anything but collect money & make policies. Even branches like Hyderabad & bangalore donot have any say to solve customers problems except to forward the complaints to Mumbai office where they rarely see light of the day in time. They are efficient in sending one reminder notice every year to pay premium, & that's it. The company says thier policies/rates are the cheapest but makes up double for it by loading the premiums by a huge amount, though the other top insurers of the country donot load the same/identical risk profile. I disontinued the policies & taken adequate cover with Pru ICICI Life, and the sadest part with the company is that they came to know that customer is no more with them after 3 months of the lapse date & no systems to find out what's wrong. Even with LIC most of the agents take the pain to personally make efforts to call & solve customers problems & make them pay their premiums in time. Of course LIC is the worst when it comes to overloading pure term policies, where for a standard book premium of Rs 10,000 they ask as high as Rs. 25000 to cover pure risk. 20-30% overloading is very common with companies like HDFC std life, so don't be gulible they are cheap. But having gone thru all the medical examinations, prospective customers mostly resign to their fate of extra premiums thinking that may be it is because of thier professional or health risks ; and that it may not be very common to find a 10 out of 10 risk to get normal premium. It's wrong friends. It is because of their foreign collaborators policies as mostly all the companies share the same mortality tables. NEVER OPT FOR ULIPs, AS THEY ARE RIGHT ROYAL LOOT OF YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY unless you are such a guy who cannot have any control on your finances and spend or blow up all your money on fancy gadgets. Instead blindly stay put with a good mutual fund atleast through SIPs & invest the rest for a good term cover till 60 or 65 yrs of your age. Once you are married this is the first job. Good Luck & keep your eyes and ears wide open and force companies to change their ways by just ditching the incompetent ones. Because the risk of solvency will always be there with private insurers especially the smaller ones inspite of prudential investment norms of IRDA, since their policies donot enjoy soverign guarantee as with LIC and the mergers & acquisitions are normal in Insurance business also & you donot know about your company even & how your policies take shape into in the hands of new owners.

Moreover the service tax for the previous insurance contracts are also being passed on fully to old customers on the pretext that the money goes to the govt. and not to them. But Service tax as levied by the govt. is the liability and responsibility of the service provider. It is upto them to charge it to the customers with/without specifying it explicitly. But most of the previous insurance policies/contracts donot have a provision to pass on govt taxes and they have to pay it from their kitty. But for new policies they can either bear or charge it to the customers explicitly/implicitly

But most of the old policy holders either donot have time/patience or inclination to resist and calmly pay whatever is printed on the renewal notice.

It has to stop. Old policy holders, pursue the matter with CERC Ahmedabad or IRDA atleast to start with, by e-mail atleast.

And Insurance policy is basically a contract and as in case of any contract there should be an exit route in the event there is a deviation in the mutually agreed terms at the time of taking policy. And policies discontinued by the customers due to such deviations from contracted terms should not be treated routinely as ' Lapsed Policies' on the basis that premiums are unpaid. Because a lapsed policy holder will no be issued another policy by the same company in the future and since the proposal form requires to indicate the all the policies taken from the company including lapsed policies.

So consumers beaware & don't be happy with your act of writing your cheque & thinking that your job is over.Make sure you are also not cheated on technical grounds.