The Growth Plan from NTUC is one of the more popular single premium endowment plans in the market for a duration of five years or more.

While the returns are nowhere near what you can get from an equity investment, it does give a conservative and steady returns of 2-4%+ p.a.

The interest rates in Singapore have reduced quite significantly over the past few years. 12-month fixed deposit rates are now hovering around 0.4% p.a. compared to 0.9% p.a. 5 years ago. Similarly, 5-year Singapore government bond yields have declined from 3.2% p.a. 5 years ago to 0.9% p.a. today.

As such, NTUC have decided that it is no longer possible to offer the Growth Plan in its current form and have withdrawn it from the market.

A new version of the Growth Plan will be launched in its place but you can expect returns to be poorer compared to the old one.

NTUC Income will be launching a new series of their Capital Plus plan. This has a policy term of 2 years and a guaranteed yield of 1.4% p.a. upon maturity.

Capital Plus will be opened for application from 11 July 2011. This product is available on a first-come first-serve basis. The allocation for this tranche of Capital Plus is relatively small and it is anticipated that the allocation will be fully taken up within a few days from the launch.

The entry age is from 16 to 80 (last birthday) and is available for cash or SRS.

The minimum single premium per policy is set at $10,000 and the maximum single premium per Insured is set at $1,000,000.

NTUC will be relaunching their Capital Plus (CPN23) today. Application will be closed once NTUC Income has received the sales allocation or by 15 March 2011, whichever is earlier.

This plan is opened to all policyholders and new applicants. The entry age is from 16 to 80 (last birthday), available for Cash or SRS.
It has a policy term of 2 years and a guaranteed yield of 1.4% p.a. upon maturity.

The minimum single premium per policy is set at $10,000 and the maximum single premium per Insured is set at $1,000,000.

If policyholder wish to invest in more than one Capital Plus policy, the maximum cumulative amount policyholder can invest for all policies is S$1,000,000.

Upon Death or Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) of the Insured:

a) within the first policy year, the benefit payable will be the single premium;
b) after the first policy year (and before maturity), the benefit payable will be 105% of the single premium.

For TPD, the benefit is payable if it occurs before age 65 (last birthday) or maturity, whichever is earlier.

I think the returns pale in comparison to that of CapitaMall Trust bonds (giving 2% pa) which are currently opened for subscription.

Given that the risk of CapitaMall Trust default within these two years should be relatively low, I think most people who are looking for this kind of products would probably go for CapitaMall Trust Bonds.