Yesterday, NTUC launched yet another series of their Capital Plus plan, a limited-tranche non-participating 2-years single premium non-participating plan.

Brief outline of the plan:

• 2-years single premium non-participating plan
• Guaranteed interest of 1.40%p.a. Every $10,000 investment will receive $10,281.96 at maturity.
• Provides TPD before age 65 years old (last birthday) and Death coverage
• Entry age of 16 to 80 years old (last birthday)
• Minimum single premium of $10,000 up to a maximum of S$1,000,000
• Cash or SRS
• Simplified underwriting
  • Sum Assured = 105% of Single Premium
  • Sum Assured = 100% of Single Premium (if claim occurs within the 1st policy year)

As this is a limited tranche product, applications to the plan is on a first-come-first-served basis. The product will be withdrawn upon attainment of tranche size. Any excess premium received above the tranche size will be refunded accordingly to customers.

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As such, NTUC have decided that it is no longer possible to offer the Growth Plan in its current form and have withdrawn it from the market.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