Max Life Smart Secure Plus Plan Review

Term insurance plans are usually plain and simple. You pay small premiums to your insurer and in return your insurer pays a huge amount to your family in case you are no more. I know this is not a happy thing to talk about. But it is essential to protect your family financially in case of an eventuality, right. Max Life Smart Secure+ Plus Plan does exactly the same for you. And it is one of the highest selling term insurance plans in the country.

Let’s do an in-depth review and check out what this term insurance plan offers which makes it good.

Key Features of Max Life Smart Secure Plus Plan

It is definitely a term plan loaded with features and you get a lot of options to customise your cover.

First one is increasing life cover. If you choose this option, your life cover increases by 5% every year for the first 20 years of your policy. So at the end of 20 years, your life cover actually doubles. If you started with a cover amount of Rs. 1 Cr, your cover automatically becomes Rs. 2 Cr after 20 years and then it stops. Of course you have to pay a bit of extra premium if you opt for this feature when compared to the regular level cover, but this sort of takes care of inflation by automatically enhancing your cover with time. 

Another feature is voluntary top up cover and this is quite unique in the industry. You can voluntarily increase your cover amount during the policy term if you think your existing cover is not sufficient. And the good part is that you can add this extra cover in your existing policy so you don’t need to buy another policy. This of course is subject to underwriting at the time you want to increase your cover and comes with increase in premiums for incremental sum assured. 

Then you also have the joint life option. You can cover your spouse under the same policy at a very nominal premium.

Zero Cost Benefits

There are some more features which come at no extra cost.

First one is the terminal illness benefit. Here there is no list of illnesses which is covered. All it says is if the insured person is declared terminally ill by the doctors and he does not have more than 6 months to live, he will get the benefit early while he is alive. So the death benefit is accelerated and paid early subject to a cap of Rs. 1 Cr. So if someone with a cover of Rs. 2 Cr is declared terminally ill, then Rs. 1 Cr is paid upfront while he is alive and the remaining Rs. 1 Cr is paid to the family after his demise. 

One more feature is the special exit value which is popularly called zero cost term plan. You buy a policy and later you feel you don’t need the cover, you get all your premiums back apart from GST. This comes for certain combinations of age and policy term but still it’s a great feature at no cost. Max Life Insurance was the first company to launch this feature in 2021 and then other insurers followed and added this feature to their term plans.

Riders or Add Ons

Now if we look at the riders, Max Life Smart Secure+ Plus Plan offers a host of riders to choose from. 

In the critical illness rider alone, the company offers many variants. You have options to choose from where you can cover 22, 40 or even 64 illnesses. These are all of course listed illnesses. The one with 40 illnesses is an accelerated benefit which means that a part of the death benefit is paid on the diagnosis of any of the listed critical illnesses. And when the demise happens, only the remaining portion is paid to the family. This makes the rider affordable.

Those with 22 and 64 critical illnesses are additional benefits. There are variants where you can also add TPD (Total and Permanent Disability). So the rider benefit is payable on the occurrence of TPD as well. These additional benefits are expensive but you have a lot of options and you can customise the cover according to how you want it. No other insurer has so many options in the critical illness rider to choose from.

Max Life also offers a Waiver of Premium (WOP)  rider which allows you to continue your base cover without paying any future premiums in case of critical illness as well as dismemberment. This again is one of a kind in the market where dismemberment is also included in WOP rider. 

And you also have the accident cover rider which enhances your cover in case of accidental death.

Premiums

With so many features and options to choose from, this is one of the best and most comprehensive plans in the market. Does this make this plan expensive?

No, in fact the base benefit under Max Life Smart Secure+ Plus Plan is one of the most affordable in the market. For many combinations of age and policy term, this is the cheapest term plan, especially for younger ages. This makes this plan a popular choice among young people looking for term cover.

Underwriting at Max Life Insurance

Now this question arises. Max Life Smart Secure+ Plus Plan has great features and at the same time it is affordable. So where is the catch? How does Max Life achieve this?

The answer is simple. Max Life as an insurer is aggressive in business acquisition and so has made the pricing very competitive. But Max Life’s underwriting is good and they do not want to cover bad risks. Almost everyone seeking a term cover has to undergo physical medical checkup. So you have to do those blood tests and ECG even if you are young and seek a cover of just Rs. 50 lac which is the minimum cover in the product. If something adverse comes in those tests, you don’t get the term cover.

Max Life also does not extend cover in certain geographical locations. They have a list of negative pin codes and if your residential address bears one of those pin codes, you do not get the cover. These are basically pincodes where they would have had adverse claim experience in the past. 

So they have these underwriting practices in place which protect them from taking substandard lives in their portfolio. And maybe hence they are able to afford such competitive pricing.

Operational Metrics that Make the Difference

Now all this is ok. Maxlife has a great term plan in place. But what about claims? Are they paying claims properly?

So here there are 2 important metrics you should look at.

1. Claim Settlement Ratio
2. Volume of claim complaints.

Let’s look at each one of them and see how Max life fares. 

If you look at Max Life’s claim settlement ratio of the last 3 years, it is somewhere between 99.3% to 99.5% which is great. This is the highest in the industry. I mean what better you can ask for. They are settling 995 claims every 1000 claims they receive. 

And if we look at their volume of claim complaints, which is the number of complaints per 10000 claims received, that is somewhere between 5 to 10 in the last 3 years. This is a low number by industry average and reflects the sincerity and efficiency with which they settle claims.

So maxlife performs quite well when it comes to settling claims. And this makes it a great choice as your term insurance provider.

But there are other companies which are much bigger with better brand equity such as HDFC Life or ICICI Prudential, SBI Life or even LIC. Max life is relatively a much smaller life insurer. So should you consider Maxlife or go for these bigger names as they are reputed players in the market?

Max life is the largest I would say emerging life insurer in India. Going by the volume of business it underwrites every year, it is somewhere on 5th or 6th spot which is not bad. And now Axis Bank, which is India’s third largest private bank, has come in as a co-promoter with a significant ownership position. This itself brings forth immense potential for future growth.

Should you buy Max Life Smart Secure Plus term insurance plan?

So to sum it up, Max Life offers a good term life plan with features to customise the coverage as per your needs. The plan is quite affordable. Max Life operates with great efficiency which reflects in its good claim settlement ratio and low volume of claim related complaints. Moreover, it’s a decent brand backed by India’s third largest private bank.

So there’s nothing which can probably stop you from buying this plan if you are looking for a term insurance cover.