While the financial crisis may have daunted investors from risk-taking, Cardif Assurance Vie’s (法國巴黎人壽) Taiwan branch launched yesterday its first investment-linked insurance policy that features a constant dollar plan with a back-end load.
“We hope to rekindle investor confidence in putting down a fixed-amount of investment at regular intervals by launching this new policy, whose back-end load will allow investors to pay sales charges later,” Ben Ng (黃旗興), general manager of the life insurer, told a press conference yesterday.
Compared with policies with a back-end load, most investment-linked insurance policies with a front-end load require policyholders to pay sales charges at the time of the initial purchase of an investment, which usually are mutual funds or insurance policies. The front-end load is deducted from the amount of the investment and as a result lowers the size of the investment.
The plan offers policyholders a 100 percent investment, assistant vice president Tommy Liao (廖正井) said yesterday.
Liao said the life insurer also offered lower management and transaction fees on investments linked to some 300 funds including 30 exchange-traded funds.
Investors will be required to put down a minimum of NT$3,000 monthly or annually, regardless of the share price. Through this, more shares would be purchased when prices are low and fewer when prices are high, the company said.
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