Pension plan norm: Cos may move IRDA

However,financial experts say if protecting conservative customers was the aim of IRDA,it got everything wrong.A conservative investor has the option of investing in a pension product that would invest predominantly in debt.Even in debt,you cant assure guaranteed returns because the returns are market linked.Only government can guaranty returns.So,the option for such investors is to go for products like PPF, says an investment expert,who doesnt want to be named.Even a huge organisation like UTI couldnt offer guaranteed returns on Unit 64 and it was forced to wind up the scheme.Even LIC was forced to withdraw some polices which used offer high assured rate of returns.These companies had the government backing,still they were forced to act, he adds.As for safeguarding the investors retirement corpus,an insurance player says his company has an option where the money would be shifted to safer avenues at least three years before the retirement so that a sudden volatile market wont have an impact on the corpus.A standard practice everyone should adopt while building a corpus for a long term goal, he says. The insurance industry,according to sources,is likely to approach IRDA with their apprehensions about the issue soon.We are studying the issue in detail.Once it is done,we may approach the IRDA.We think we should be able to convince the regulator about the negative fall out of this proposal, says an industry source.