E-Commerce India - Insurance comparison and buying made easy

Such are vagaries of life that everyone ought to insure against all odds. Life Insurance certainly reminds of LIC for previous generation. With rise in the middle-class, flourishing economy and increased awareness, the future financial needs of people have inevitably changed. People would want to secure kids education, marriage and also one's own retirement. This has led to variation in insurance products, which can cater to different needs of people at various stages of life. Obviously, with demand the supply has also grown and there are number of private enterprises too that offer life insurance policies, apart from LIC now.

If one is interested to buy an insurance policy, from which company should they buy? With clauses becoming more or less the same, how do I easily compare prices? Once I make my choice, how would I make my payment and get the policy? These are some of the questions addressed by http://policybazaar.com, a Naukri initiative. The site offers comparison of life and general insurance (health, vehicle, travel, property) from different vendors in India. One can make online payment to purchase appropriate policy. Needless to say, one should get professional advice on financial matters like these before making a decision.

Are we not going to hear much about LIC agents anymore? With services like insurance comparison offered online, would the agents vanish after a while? I think these online services are being used by only a fraction of people in India, right now.  The awareness about the plans need to grow and internet penetration should increase drastically for these policies to be purchased online in volumes. Even offline, the insurance penetration is quite low in India. Long way to go, but good that we got started !

Stock Market Analyst Recommendations - Milk or Water?

Have you invested in stock markets and follow the markets through Print and Digital Media? Do you rely on the recommendations of Analysts? In TV business news channels, the analysts provide their insights and recommendations regularly. Interestingly, no one follows-up with these analysts about their predictions. In case of any unexpected downfall of a particular stock recommended by them, the only person losing money is the investor who went by analyst's recommendation.

http://milkorwater.in addresses this specific issue and keeps track of the analyst recommendations. One can track the top analysts and their stock recommendations in terms of various performance parameters. I could track the top performing stocks from recommendations perspective and even browse through the stocks by sector.

As the name of the site suggests, the recommendations are tracked to identify whether it's pure milk or mixed with water !

Buying Mutual Funds online in India

Saving money for the rainy day is not enough, we all know that money should be 'Invested' for it to grow and help with our future needs. One of the key avenues for investment in modern times is Mutual Funds. The advancements in Financial Services has brought Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) to the benefit of the customer. One can invest small amounts of money every month - regularly - in a mutual fund, who in turn would invest in equity or debt markets on behalf of their customers.

How does one go about investing in mutual funds? We can approach regular brokers (like Geojit, ICICIDirect), company specific agents (Reliance Mutual Fund) or buy from 3rd parties who offer mutual funds of different companies. Once we buy from any of them how do we track them? How do we assess at any given point in time the value of our mutual fund portfolio and decide whether we want to sell or hold a particular Fund / Scheme.

You might be interested to check out http://moneysights.com. This site helps to discover, manage, plan and buy mutual funds. There are no charges to create an account or use the entire service including buying of the funds (no transaction fee). You just need to pay for the actual mutual fund. Mutual Fund  being one of the must-have investment vehicle, I think we can get more insights in mutual funds from this moneysights site :-)

India Budget 2012

The advent of Internet and WWW has brought content - professional, academic, corporate, user-generated and also junk - to the Net surfers. The content in the form of text, images and video presents various topics for effective consumption of the users. The topics range from news to entertainment to complaints and fun & learning for kids. There are numerous sites on the Net which offer professional content for free, http://moneycontrol.com being one such site. This site offers comprehensive information about finances especially the stock markets.

India being one of the key emerging markets, every Indian would be interested to know what is happening with the union budget 2012. With slowdown in economy growth and debacle in recent elections, union budget would be of more interest this time around. I found moneycontrol site (http://www.moneycontrol.com/budget2012/) to offer good information about the upcoming budget. Check out the key economic indicators and pre-budget reports from some of the stock brokers like ICICIDirect in this site.

Some of the key dates you need to remember:

Railway Budget	March 14 2012
Economic Survey	March 15 2012
Union Budget	March 16 2012

If you are looking for comprehensive information about previous budgets, you can access them at http://indiabudget.nic.in/. As budget has impact on every individual - professional, retired, home-maker, businessman or NRI, it's important to follow the same.

I really wonder, how people used to follow the budget (just the newspapers? Radio? Doordarshan?) in pre-Internet eras :-)

Internet Banking in India

I still remember those days in early 90's how I used to operate my bank account. I had to take pass-book for sure with every visit. After my bank transaction either the teller or the concerned staff member used to enter the particulars in the pass-book. Even for balance enquiry or cheque-book request, I had to visit the bank and stand in queue for my turn.

After two decades, the scenario is pretty much different, modern and efficient. I hardly visit my bank now. I mostly use ATM for withdrawal of money. I sometimes issue a cheque for the concerned person to en-cash. Otherwise, I transfer money from my account to another person's account with a few clicks. I check my balance amount online through Internet banking aka anywhere-anytime banking. Thanks to information technology, I hardly visit the bank these days ! There is no scheduled commercial bank in India which does not offer Internet based banking now.

Isn't it a super-saver of time and money for one and all? But what am I doing with those extra hours in my life now ? :-)

Stock Exchanges in India

National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay stock Exchange (BSE) are the two key stock exchanges of India. Before NSE was introduced in 1994, the trading of shares used to happen in open outcry system. NSE brought the online, fully-automated, screen-based trading system into picture. With the power of computers (automated trading platform, clearing and settlement) and communications (VSAT terminals to link trading terminals with the platform), NSE has taken the # 1 spot in terms of number of trades in equity in India (globally # 3).

While BSE is the oldest stock exchange in Asia, it is yet to catch-up with NSE in terms of daily turnover and number of trades - a reflection of lack of application of information technology in time.