ICICI Pru iProtect Smart

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

The ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart term plan, although comparatively more expensive than other term plans in the market, provides you with the option of making important customizations in terms of premium payments and how you would like your family to receive the claim amount. 

However, important customization options such as increasing cover or a comprehensive critical illness rider are not available with this plan. Further, the insurer, ICICI Prulife, holds a poor track record in terms of both its purchase and claim settlement experience. 

Here is a list of some of the top benefits and features which come with the ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart. 

What are the top benefits of ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart? 

• Life cover Benefit:  If you pass away during the policy duration, the term insurance plan by ICICI will pay 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: This 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: While the ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart might cover most of your requirements, it does not provide the increasing cover option to grow your cover automatically. So, every time you decide to upgrade your cover, you will have to buy a new term insurance policy manually. 
• Cover Duration: This 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. 
• 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 Prudential iProtect Smart plan, you can choose the Limited Pay option to pay off all your premiums within 5, 7, 10 years or until you’re 60 years of age. 
• Claim Payout Option: The ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart plan provides you with various options to select the claim payout. You can choose from among the following options -  
  • One-time lump sum, where your nominee will receive the entire claim payout in one large payment. 
  • Lump-Sum with monthly income - in which your claim amount can be divided into one large payment, and several smaller payments on a monthly income basis, and 
  • Monthly income model, where your nominee will be paid a regular income, every month for a long period, say - 10-15 years. 

What riders are available with ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart? 

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

• Accelerated 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 this policy offers an accelerated critical illness rider, when you die, the critical illness benefit amount will be reduced from your family's overall claim. This is a red flag to watch out for. Our advice would be to steer clear of this rider. 
• Accidental Death Benefit Rider: With this rider, your family will receive an additional amount of money, if you pass away in an accident. In case your eligible cover amount is lower than the cover amount required for your family, you can use this rider to improve your overall cover too. 
• Waiver of Premium on Accidental Disability Rider: This is one of the most helpful riders, which everyone should consider buying. With the rider, if you get seriously disabled due to an accident, you will not have to pay any further premiums under your policy. However, you can continue to enjoy the policy benefits until the end of the term. 

Why should you consider buying from ICICI Prulife? 

• Speed of claims: ICICI Prulife has settled 95.83% of its claims in less than 30 days. This indicates that your family or nominee will not have to wait too long to receive the claim payout after submitting the claims documents. 
• 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 Prudential Life Insurance is 97.84% and their claim amount settlement ratio is 91.64%.

What are the Limitations of using ICICI Prulife? 

Here are some of the disadvantages and limitations of using ICICI Prulife-

• Length of the Claim Form: ICICI Prulife, has a moderately lengthier claim form compared to other insures. 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 holds a large number of complaints with regard to its claims. This means your family could face some hassle during the claim settlement process. 
• Personal Relationship Manager: ICICI Prulife does not provide your nominee the option of a personal relationship manager. Meaning, your family won’t have anyone from the insurance company to handhold them during the entire 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 on Toll- Free Service: When it comes to customer service, our research found the insurer’s response over 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.

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 2.5/5.