New Delhi, 14 December, 2011: MetLife India Insurance Company Limited (MetLife), one of India’s leading life insurance companies, today announced the launch of its new unit linked child plan – “Met Smart Child”. This plan offers complete solution for child’s higher education, even in the absence of parents. The life insured is the parent or grandparent and the beneficiary is the child/grandchild. This is the second Child Savings Plan added in MetLife’s portfolio, after Met Bhavishya.

Post the change in the ULIP regulations, all ULIP products will now have a similar charge structure. However, this product comes with a unique feature that the funds will never get misused by anyone and will be used to provide benefits only to the child/grandchild.

Met Smart Child offers a differentiated death benefit. In case of the unfortunate demise of the parent, the sum assured under the product is paid immediately to the beneficiary and all the future premiums which would have been otherwise paid by the parent are paid by MetLife into the fund.

These future premiums are paid into the Balancer fund, which offers the twin benefits of potential equity based upsides as well the steady performance of the debt markets.

The plan is available in three terms of 10, 15 and 20 years with a minimum premium of Rs. 18,000. The amount cover is equal to 10 times of the chosen premium and remains constant throughout the term of the Policy. The plan comes with 6 unit linked funds for customers with varying risk appetite to choose from. It provides customers with an option of unlimited switches between the available funds to take care of the changing risk appetite of the customers. Systematic Transfer Option under this plan allows the customer to hedge against the near term market volatilities and built corpus for long term systematically.

Policies with 15 and 20 year term have a loyalty additions benefit of 2% and 3% respectively. These loyalty additions will be paid even on demise of the parent.

The fund will charge 7 per cent in the first year, 6 per cent in the second year and from third year onwards a charge of 5 per cent will be levied on the premiums before investing. The administration charges will be Rs 10 per month between first to fifth year and from sixth year onwards the administration charges become Rs 35 per month. The fund management charges will range from 1.10 per cent - 1.25 per cent and the mortality charges will be calculated on the basis of the attained age of the parent.

Met Smart Child plan can be easily bought by just filling an application form. Ease of buying feature has been designed especially keeping in mind the fast pace of life.