Housing Development Finance Corporation Bank (HDFC Bank) has launched a pension plan, Vishrama Rekawarana to bring many benefits to the investors while financing its corporate goal of providing long term housing loans to the needy. This innovative pension plan has been arranged to secure and safeguard the future of their customers and investors.
Even though, the ageing population has reached an alarming levels in Sri Lanka, the pension plan will benefit the people to face their retirement with courage.
Considering that the larger permanent employees benefit from interest income from investments or a lump-sum obtained from Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees Trust Fund (ETF) emoluments, it is noteworthy to mention that the self-employed people are not members of any defined Retirement-Benefit plan what so ever.
Another issue of concern is with the reducing trend of interest rates, neither the monthly pension income nor the monthly interest gained from compulsory savings could be considered adequate to maintain a decent standard of living after employees retire.
Faced with such a complex dilemma, the HDFC Bank has designed this customer-centric Financial Solution to suite the dynamic market conditions. As with other existing Investment Plans in the Bank's product portfolio, here too, the objective has been with a focus on the highest customer return in creating wealth.
This time, HDFC Bank has identified an opportunity for a unique financial product to act as a long term Pension Fund.
The minimum Initial Investment can begin with Rs.500with flexible amounts of investments added thereafter. Subsequent investments after the initial deposit could be even as small as Rs.100.
HDFC Vishrama Rekawarana will be in a position to offer loans to its investors, on accumulation of funds. Besides, it also carries with it, the ability of being a customized financial instrument in catering to the varied needs of identified social clusters such as agricultural farming community, fisheries community. Due to the ability of being designed to cater to the specific community based needs, through its countrywide branch network, HDFC Bank intends promoting this scheme with minor adaptations to suite the needs of different institutions with specified corporate solutions and the specific needs of identified village communities.
Investments are geared to pay interest returns that are geared to equal 75% of the lowest interest charged for housing loans.
HDFC Chairperson Siromi Wickramasinghe described Vishrama Rekawarana scheme as a revolutionary investment plan which apart from stable and high returns, also facilitates the account holder to transfer the fund to a nominee at maturity.
She said this mechanism would always yield above-the-market interest earnings to Vishrama Rekawarana investors. It would always offer interest above the Treasury- Bill rates and fixed deposits rates prevalent in the market at any given time.
The most important feature here is that even a regular small investments like Rs.100 made periodically would benefit the investor with the highest interest return.
