ICICI Pru iProtect Smart is a term insurance plan offered by ICICI Prulife.

This term plan is more expensive than other term plans available in the market. While it provides you with several options to customize how you would like your family to receive the claim amount, important customization options such as increasing cover, limited pay, or a comprehensive critical illness rider are not available. Further, the insurer, ICICI Prulife, was found to offer a good experience during the policy purchase phase but holds a poor track record in terms of its claim settlement experience.

Here’s the ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart review.

What are the features and benefits of the ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart Plan?

Let’s take a look at some of the top iProtect Smart features and benefits -

Life Cover Benefit: If you pass away during the policy duration, this term insurance plan pays an assured sum of money to your family. This policy doesn’t have any maturity benefits - meaning, you won’t get anything back in case you survive the term of the policy. You can claim tax benefits under Sec. 80C of the Income Tax Act with this term insurance policy.
Entry Age for the Policy: The ICICI Pru Smart Protect plan allows you to apply for the policy, when your age is at least 18 years and until you’re 65 years old.
Increasing Cover: The ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart does not provide the increasing cover option to grow your cover automatically. So, every time you decide to upgrade your coverage, you will have to buy a new term insurance policy manually.
Cover Duration: The ICICI Pru iProtect Smart plan gives you the chance to choose a cover till the age of 99 years, which makes it an ultra-long-term policy. This means you can be covered for your entire life and enjoy the cover benefits post-retirement as well.
Early Exit Option: This option lets you opt out of the plan while it is still in force. You can do so during a specific time period set by the insurance company and you’ll get a refund of all the premiums you’ve paid up to that point. This plan however does not offer an early exit option.
Limited Pay Option: This option helps you with getting off the burden of paying premiums on a monthly/ yearly basis, by allowing you to clear all your premiums early in life. Under the ICICI Pru i Protect Smart plan, you can choose the Limited Pay option to pay off all your premiums in monthly, half-yearly and yearly options - and then enjoy the cover for the remaining duration.
Claim Payout Options: The ICICI Pru i Protect Smart plan provides you with various options to customize how your family will receive the claim amount. Claim payout can be customized for your nominee with options for a one-time payment, instalment payments, or a combination of both.

Which riders are available with ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart Plan?

ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart provides the option to choose additional benefits called riders. These riders help you to boost your policy.

Critical Illness Rider: With this add-on, if you're diagnosed with a serious disease listed in the policy document during the policy term, you will be paid a fixed amount of money as a critical illness benefit. However, since the ICICI Pru Smart Protect plan offers an accelerated critical illness rider when you pass away, the critical illness benefit amount will be reduced from the overall term insurance claim. This is a red flag to watch out for. Our advice would be to steer clear of this rider. The Critical Illness Rider, as part of the base cover, covers 34 illnesses, with a maximum cover of Rs 1 crore, available until the age of 60.
Accidental Death Benefit Rider: With this rider, your family will receive an additional amount of money, if you pass away in an accident. You can also consider buying this rider to improve your overall coverage in case your eligible cover amount is lower than the cover amount required for your family. The Accidental Death Benefit Rider provides coverage up to the base cover amount of Rs 2 crores, whichever is lower, available until the age of 80.
Waiver of Premium Rider: This is one of the most helpful riders, that you should consider buying. With the rider, if you get seriously disabled due to an accident, you will not have to pay any remaining policy premiums. However, you can continue to enjoy the policy benefits until the end of the term. However, there are no provisions for the Waiver of Premium Rider for accidental disability or critical illness under this plan.

Why should you consider buying from ICICI Prulife?

Here are a few reasons why you can consider purchasing from ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company -

Online Tracking of Claims: ICICI Prulife provides your nominee the option to track their claim online as well, instead of reaching out to the company, again and again, to learn about the claim status.
Claim Settlement Ratio: The claim settlement ratio of ICICI Prulife is 99.17%.

What are the limitations of buying from ICICI Prulife?

Here are some of the disadvantages and limitations of buying from ICICI Prulife -

Speed of claims: ICICI Prulife has settled 96.91% of its claims in less than 30 days. This indicates that your family or nominee might have to wait a little longer to receive the claim payout after submitting the claims documents.
Length of the Claim Form: ICICI Prulife, has a very long claim form compared to other insurers. This indicates your family or nominee is likely to face some hassle while filling out the claim form.
Claims Complaints: According to research conducted by our in-house research team, we gathered that ICICI Prulife has received 0.10% of complaints with regard to claims. This means your family could face some hassle during the claim settlement process.
Home Pick-up for Claims: The insurer does not provide the option to pick up the documents from home. Your family/ nominee will have to visit the branch to submit the documents personally.

How is the customer service provided by ICICI Prulife?

Response to Toll-Free Service: When it comes to customer service, our research found the insurer’s response to the toll-free to be average compared to other insurers.
Response on Twitter: Your nominee would also have the option to connect over Twitter for any doubts or queries with regard to the status of their claims. However, our research suggests that the response rate over social media of ICICI Prudential is slow.
Policy purchase-related complaints: Based on our research, the insurance company has received 0.47% of complaints related to its after-sales service, which is higher than other insurance companies.

About the Insurer- ICICI Prulife

ICICI Prulife, also known as ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited is a Life Insurance Company in India. It offers Term Life Insurance Plans, Traditional Savings Plans, and Unit Linked Insurance Plans. Founded in the Year 2001, it is a joint venture between ICICI Bank Limited and Prudential Corporation Holdings Limited. The company is headquartered in Mumbai and has 5,324 bank branches across India. The CEO / CMD of the company is Mr. N S Kannan.

Final review of ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart

Considering all the product benefits, customer service, and claims experience, and on the basis of 100+ parameters analyzed by our in-house research team, ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart gets a Beshak⭐Rating of 3.5/5.