July 2011 – OneMint

Top Up Medical Insurance Policies in India

This is another post from the Suggest a Topic page, and in this post we’re going to take a look at top up medical insurance policies.

Before I start, I must admit that I came to know about the existence of this product only after the comment was left here, so I’m still learning about them.

What is a Top Up Medical Insurance Policy?

Top Up Medical Policies are offered to supplement your existing health insurance, and kick in where the current medical insurance policy stops.

So, if you have medical insurance for Rs. 4 lacs, and take a top up policy of another Rs. 6 lacs, then the insurance company will pay you anything over the initial Rs. 4 lacs that you insured for.

If you get a hospital bill for Rs. 6 lacs, then you will get Rs. 4 lacs from your first insurance, and Rs. 2 lacs from the top up medical insurance.

Every top up medical insurance policy comes with a “Threshold Limit”. The threshold limit is the limit after which the policy starts paying you. In the case I took above the threshold limit was Rs. 4 lacs – this means that your top up policy will only start paying you if your hospital bill is more than Rs. 4 lacs or the threshold level.

In the case of the top up medical insurance – you should reach the threshold every time to be eligible for payment.

So, if you have a second hospitalization, and you get a bill of only Rs. 3.5 lacs, you will not be eligible for claiming the top up insurance because each bill should exceed the threshold level.

There is however, another version of top up medical insurance called the super top up medical insurance which sums up what you have already paid in your multiple treatments, and then considers that value. So, if you went to the hospital twice, and paid Rs. 2 lacs each time, then it will consider that you have already paid Rs. 4 lacs, and if that was your threshold level, then you will start getting paid from the super top up policy from the next time. The time frame for this is usually a year after which the clock resets.

Now let’s take a look at some other points about them.

Top Up Insurance Policy Covered Under Section 80D

The top up policy is also covered Section 80D. It covers hospitalization expenses, and generally excludes things that aren’t covered in your primary insurance policy.

You Can Buy Top Up Insurance From Any Company

You don’t have to be a customer of the same company’s primary insurance to buy a top up insurance. This means that you can buy top up medical insurance from United India even if your base medical insurance is from some other company.

It is not clear to me if you need any base medical insurance at all or not, but from what I read it seemed to me that you can buy top up insurance even if you don’t have primary medical insurance. That doesn’t sound right, but based on what I read this is what I think is the case.

Rationale Behind the Introduction of Top Up Medical Policy

They were introduced in India in 2009, and the rationale was fairly straightforward. Not many companies offered a big amount of medical insurance, and the top up policy gave you a way to get medical insurance in addition to what you already have.

Since then, the limits have been raised, and to the best of my knowledge the top up products still remain relatively lesser known.

The reason for this could be their lower premiums, which means that they are not pushed by agents as much as other products, or it could mean that it is cheaper to buy a Rs. 10 lac medical insurance policy than it is to buy a Rs. 5 lac medical insurance policy, and then top it up with another Rs. 5 lacs.

I don’t know the answer to that, and it’s probably not even a right comparison because of the way the threshold limit works.

The premiums that I saw on the prospectus of a few sites seemed low, but that’s just based on a cursory glance, and I haven’t done any research about them.

My initial feeling about this product is that it can be a good idea for someone who has a somewhat low medical insurance like say Rs. 5 lacs. Most of you are probably covered by your employers to some level, but it might make sense to beef that up if that’s the only medical you have, and especially if your parents or kids also come under the same thing.

List of companies offering Top Up Insurance

This is probably not the complete list, and if you know of other companies that offer this type of insurance then please do leave a message and I’ll update the post.

United India Top Up

United India Super Top Up

Star Health Super Surplus

ICICI Lombard Health Care Plus

Your thoughts?

Finally, I’ll be interested to hear if any of you have a top up medical insurance policy, and want to share your rationale, experience, or anything else that may be of benefit to others.

Puzzles for the week ending 30th July 2011

Here are the puzzles from OneMint’s Facebook page this week. I couldn’t post last week because I was away Saturday, and didn’t get an opportunity on Sunday.

—

1. Simplicity can make your message powerful by carrying it far and clear. But, that was not one of the virtues of my beloved uncle. He told me the following one day:

Winged creatures with a shared identity tend to gravitate to those that have similar leanings.

I was baffled, but it’s apparently a very well known saying. What is the saying?

2. My friend asked, “Should I start my business in summer or autumn?”

“In school I asked you to join the boxing team, but not the wrestling team. Later, I suggested you learn the salsa, but not the ballet, and then I advised to you to become a surgeon but not a psychologist. Doesn’t that tell you what my advice now will be?”, I said.

In which season will he start his business?

3. “A rabbit petting zoo was a great idea!”, my friend said, “little school kids can take care of them, so overheads are really low.”

That was right, I looked at the area and saw only uniformed kids, and cute little rabbits.

“Look at all those ears”, I said – “I can count 120 of them.” “In that case, there must be a 100 more legs there.” said my friend.

How many rabbits, and kids were present there?

4. “Congratulations!”, said my father in law, “Your wife’s mother in law’s only son’s sister in law is going to go to the same college as you!”

Who was he talking about?

5. Can you guess the missing number? It is not part of a sequence, you have to visualize the answer a bit, and do one addition and a multiplication.

6. TIC TIC TIC is a sweet sound, but a pleasant sound is not what I heard when my friend stormed into the room with a newspaper in hand declaring this.

I’m going to send all these _ _ _ _TIC_ _ _ _ to the _ _ _ _ _ _TIC.

Can you fill in the blanks to tell me what he was saying?

About these

If you missed my earlier post about them, and are wondering what these are then I started writing some puzzles a couple of weeks ago, and since they are not big enough for a full post I publish one every day on OneMint’s Facebook page, and then try to publish a week’s worth on Sunday here. There are no prizes for correct guesses, just the pleasure of getting them right.

Debt Ceilings, Biases and Rap Music

The big news in the financial world this week has been the uncertainty surrounding the possible American default, and what looked like a really remote possibility feels more likely now. Since this is such a political issue, it’s hard to read anything about this that is not ideologically influenced.

However, I was able to find one such piece written by Professor Aswath Damodaran who does a fantastic job in explaining what is likely to happen if the American debt is downgraded. This is a good read for anyone who wants to understand this issue and learn about what the implications will be.

Closer home, Indian Express reports that Speak Asia’s COO has been arrested along with 3 others.

Shabbir has some thoughts on my post on who should you listen to. He raises an important question about how do you know when people have biases, and who would you rather listen to – someone who is slightly biased as a result of his stock holding, or someone who has no biases at all, but also, no stock positions and hence no skin in the game at all.

I thought about this question myself while going through Sandip Sabharwal’s critique of the RBI Monetary Policy. My first thought was of course you don’t like thisÂ – if my job depended on how the markets performed, and someone’s policies made the market tank – I wouldn’t like that policy either, but then maybe I’m being too harsh, and finding biases where there are none.

It’s a good post, and definitely worth your read.

Hemant does a good job in writing a detailed post about ETFs.

Some good news – Seth Godin has informed me that all of you are celebrities now. Umm, without the money or the fame of course. But seriously, it’s a good post that takes you through some fundamental changes happening in our lives due to the growing influence of social networking.

Finally, for your entertainment – this rap video about raising the debt ceiling. “Calling up China, Yo we straight out of 20’s!” Hilarious!

Enjoy your weekend!

The trouble with personal recommendations

Regular readers know that I don’t hand out personalized advice to anyone, and although I think most of my regular readers are aware of why I do this, IÂ thought it will be a good idea to write down my rationale clearly, and also point people to this page when they seek such recommendations.

I didn’t plan to do this post but I’m getting more and more of these kind of emails nowadays, and I think that has something to do with where the market is right now, and how it has attracted quite a few new entrants to it. Also, I hope that this will nod you to evaluate others who are handing out advice a little more critically, which in my opinion will be a good thing.

With that said, here are my main reasons for staying away from handing out recommendations.

1. I’m not a professional: This is by far the number 1 reason. I’m not aÂ professional and I don’t do this for a living. I don’t feel that I haveÂ enough knowledge to advice people on what they should do. I try to stick to Â facts in my post, and then when there are comments I try to answer themÂ factually as well. If you ask me what the Post Office Monthly Income Scheme is – that’s a much easier and factual question for me to answer than to tell you whether that’s right for you or not. I try to stick to those kind of questions.

2. You are unique like everyone else: Different people have different needs,Â and even if I felt I knew something was right, there is normally no way toÂ find out if it is right for you without getting into a lot of details withÂ you.

You can see some very good examples of this on the comments of the NPSÂ post. You will see someone going after me because NPS is a bad product andÂ I’m not saying so and then someone else going after me because NPS is aÂ good product and I’m not recommending it.

Both these people come from different perspectives and I’m sure what theyÂ are saying is true for them, but probably not true for “everyone” else. When they find that their experience doesn’t match with what I have to say they take offense to that, and I can totally understand that. But how can you blame someone for doing a thing, and then not doing Â the very thing?

A lot of this is contextual I’m afraid, and gathering context needs a lot more time and effort than is possible on this forum.

3. I really don’t know: This is true more often than I’d like to admit. But in a lot of cases I simply don’t know. Â The L&T Finance IPO is open right now so let’s take an example of that – should youÂ subscribe to the IPO or not?

Let’s think about the answers for a minute. If I say you should subscribe toÂ it – what does that mean? In my mind it can Â mean only one thing – that it willÂ open at a premium and will not go down below the IPO price ever, or at least forÂ a very long period. If that’s not true, then why not wait and buy it when it lists at a discount.

On the other hand, what if I say don’t subscribe to it? That means I expect it to go down with listing at which time I can buy it for cheaper or it could mean that the company is not worth investing in at all.

I don’t know of any way to predict these outcomes with reasonable accuracy – I simplyÂ don’t know.

Occasionally, this answer confuses people, they ask how are others recommending stocks and IPOs?

I don’t know how they are doing it, but I’m fairly sure why they are doing it.

Because there is a market for it.

The number of people who want stock tips, and recommendations outstrips the number of people who understand that these don’t work by probably 1,000 – 1.

Anyone who can tie a tie can give stock advice, and sometimes even that’s not needed. There aren’t very good ways of measuring how effective someone’s advice has been, and that’s how most of these people stay in the game for so long. Not by being right, but by not getting caught.

I’m not saying everyone falls in this category, but a lot of people certainly do. I’m sure there are people who predict very well, and once you identify them they become a very valuable resource for you as well.

Unfortunately, I have no tips or recommendations because I simply don’t know.

I can go in with a few more reasons, but the theme remains the same. I don’t think managing money, and finances is very hard to do, but at the same time it’s not as easy as to get a one line answer and then buy insurance, gold or stocks using that information. There can only be rewards if you put in time and effort in the research.

Indian ADR List

I wanted to compile a list of Indian ADRs in the US as soon as I did my post on the performance of Indian ETFs listed in the US because I wanted to see if there are enough individual ADRs that someone in the US can buy to get enough exposure to India, and be fairly well diversified as well.

I found that there are only 14 Indian ADRs listed in the US, and a lot of them are not doing very well. Further, they are heavily concentrated in the software, and telecom services sector.

If you wanted to get exposure to India, then I’d say an ETF like INDY is much better than picking a few stocks from the universe of Indian ADRs available to you.

The ADR options are just very limited.

Here is a list of Indian ADRs available in the US along with their ticker, the exchange they are listed in, and the industry they operate in.

S.No.	Name	Ticker	Exchange	Industry
1	Infosys	INFY	NASDAQ	Software & Programming
2	Wipro	WIT	NYSE	Software & Programming
3	Patni Computer	PTI	NYSE	Software & Programming
4	Satyam Computer	SAYCY	PINK	Software & Programming
5	WNS Holding	WNS	NYSE	BPO
6	Mahanagar Telephone Nigam	MTNL	NYSE	Communications Services
7	Tata Communications	TCL	NYSE	Communications Services
8	Tata Motors	TTM	NYSE	Auto and Truck
9	Sify	SIFY	NASDAQ	Computer Services
10	Rediff	REDF	NASDAQ	Computer Services
11	Sterlite Industries	SLT	NYSE	Metal Mining
12	Dr. Reddyâ€™s	RDY	NYSE	Biotechnology and Drugs
13	HDFC Bank	HDB	NYSE	Banking
14	ICICI Bank	IBN	NYSE	Banking

These are the only Indian ADRs that I could find, and if you feel that there are some that I have missed, please leave a comment and I will update my post.

Few Interesting facts from the Monetary Review Policy

RBI increased the Repo rate to 8.00% today, and while the hike itself was not a surprise, the fact that it was half a percentage instead of a quarter percentage surprised everyone.

I was going through the report today, and there were several interesting things that caught my eye. Let me list down some of them here because they help understand RBI’s perspective on what the economy is facing, and also facilitates an understanding of what they’re doing, and what they are likely to do in the future.

Inflation is more generalized now

We have been seeing high inflation for much more than a year now, and while initially the primary culprit was high food prices, that has now translated into higher prices in other areas as well, and triggered what the report says is a more generalized inflation.

There is a case of demand push inflation with sales of various companies increasing during the past year, and companies utilizing more of their capacity which shows that there is sufficient demand in the market even with the high inflation. The RBI looks at a survey called the OBICUS (Order Book, Inventory and Capacity Utilisation Survey), and this survey shows that capacity utilization has increased in 17 out of the 22 industries covered in it.

However, rising sales have not translated into profits that have risen correspondingly. Profit growth has been slower due to high input prices.

Outlook same as before

In line with what they said earlier, RBI states that inflation will be high for another quarter, but then they expect it to recede in the latter half of the financial year.

This is of course based on how things stand today, and there are three things in particular which the report calls “The troika that may alter baseline growth and inflation projections” that can impact inflation and GDP growth expectations adversely.

These are:

Bad monsoon
Commodity bubble or collapse
Euro Zone debt crisis assuming a full blown proportion.

Food continues to remain a big cause of inflation.

The report has this staggering statistic that food stocks have reached 65.6 million tons in June 1 2011, which is twice the food security reserve requirement, and which exceeds the current storage capacity! It also touches upon the commonly cited statistic that 40% of our fruits and perishable items go waste due to lack of storage and infrastructure.

There is an excellent chart in the report that shows how the food stock has grown in the past few months, and the relationship between the procurement and off take of food stock.

This reinforces what has been said earlier, and something I’ve also written about quite a few times. To really tackle the problem of inflation, you have to tackle the supply side issue of food procurement, storage and distribution.

Investments slowdown, but private demand continues to remain strong

The corporate investment in the second half of 2010 – 11 dropped 43% from the figure in the first half. The rising interest rates obviously contribute to this but there are probably other factors and policies like allowing FDI in multi brand retail, and removing other constraints will help investment pick up. The private demand was however buoyant and the report attributes this to improved agriculture growth

Â Subsidies are likely to overshoot budget

The petroleum subsidy for the current year has been estimated lower than what it came to last year, and RBI says that this could overshoot by as much as 1% of GDP!

The level of subsidy could overshoot by 0.50% of GDP, payments to oil marketing companies for the under recovery they incur could overshoot by 0.20%, and elimination of customs and excise duties may cause loss of revenue to the extent of 0.30% of GDP.

Current Account Deficit Improved

The CAD (Current Account Deficit) improved or moderated, and the deficit turned out to be 2.6% of GDP last year instead of 2.8% as was the case in 2009 – 10.

This was due to an increase in invisibles, which was supported by an improved performance by the software sector. Another interesting statistic is the changing composition of the countries India exports to. In the last two decades the percentage of OECD countries have come down to make way for developing countries. Another interesting nugget is that China and South Africa accounted for about 32% of the increase in share of exports to developing countries.

Here is an excellent chart from the report which highlights the changing export destinations quite well.

I wasn’t aware of this changing composition till today, and it was quite interesting to see the data like this. When you think about it, it makes sense that our exports are growing in the countries who are growing themselves, but generally when someone is talking about exports or even when you read about them you almost always think about exporting to developed countries.

Conclusion

This by no means covers everything that was present in the report, and in fact I’ve left out the section on Monetary and Liquidity position that I want to do a full post later on.

However, these statistics do give you a good idea of the environment and factors that RBI is operating in, and considers while making changes to the interest rates.

If you found this post interesting, then I’d also recommend my other posts in the Economy section, and especially the two posts I did on the budget earlier this year.

L&T Finance Holding IPO

After quite a lull, a big IPO is going to hit the market on 27th July 2011, and it will give a good indication to other companies of how much retail appetite is there for IPOs, and of course it gives me an opportunity to write a post with pretty pie charts.

L&T Finance Holding is a NBFC (Non Banking Finance company) holding company, which means that it has fully owned subsidiaries which operates its business, and their revenues and expenses roll up to the parent company.

They are present in three main lines of business:

Corporate and Retail Financing
Infrastructure Financing.
Investment Management.

Of these, the corporate and retail segment is the biggest, infrastructure funding is the second biggest, and at present, the investment management part of the business is miniscule and contributes less than 1% to the overall pie.

Since it is a holding company, it has the following 3 direct subsidiaries:

1. L&T Infrastructure Finance Company: This company invests in the infrastructure sector, had a total income of Rs. 7.03 billion in fiscal 2011, and forms 33.29% of the total company. The total gross outstanding loans for this business were Rs. 71.8 billion.

2. L&T Finance: L&T Finance conducts the retail and corporate finance of the company. The retail part also includes the micro finance business, and the micro finance business comprises of the 4.5% of total unsecured loans of the retail segment. The total income of this group was Rs. 13.9 billion in fiscal 2011, and formed 66.08% of the total revenue. The total gross outstanding loan of this business were Rs. 101 billion.

3. India Infrastructure Developers Limited: This subsidiary doesn’t do any business right now, but they plan to start financing small and medium corporate entities by fiscal 2012.

Further, it has two indirect subsidiaries as well – L&T Investment Management Limited, and L&T Mutual Fund Trustee Limited. Here is the company structure from the offer document.

The L&T Finance IPO price has been set up between a range of Rs. 51 – 59, and this is good because just before this IPO they did a pre – placement with a US Private Equity Investor – MACE CIPEF Limited, and sold about 4% of their stake at Rs. 55. So, retail investors will get about the same deal as the PE players.

L&T Finance is a fairly large company with revenues of Rs. 21.14 billion and net profit of Rs. 3.925 billion in fiscal 2011. In fiscal 2010, the revenues and net profit were Rs. 14.29 billion, and Rs. 2.63 billion.Â Both the operating subsidiaries have a good Capital Adequacy Ratio of over 16%, and when you look at that number with the size, and growth it’s easy to see why this IPO has been graded 5 out of 5 by the credit rating agencies.

The Diluted EPS for 2011 was Rs. 2.83, and for 2010 it was Rs. 2.17. It was a negative of Rs. 0.05 in 2009. At the EPS of Rs. 2.83, and the higher range of Rs. 60, the P/E multiple comes out to be about 21.2, which I think is not too rich, but not cheap either. Especially so because their own prospectus lists down their competitors and their respective P/E ratios on the closing price of July 1 2011, and basic EPS of 2011.

There will be 2 main uses for the funds raised from this IPO. They are going to pay off some of their parent’s loans, and strengthen the capital base of the subsidiaries. In the prospectus, L&T Finance say that they are going to raise Rs. 15,750 million, and use it to recapitalize, and pay off parent company’s debt in the following ratio.

So, about a fourth of the money is going to repay debt from the promoter which is probably a good thing since this debt is at a relatively high 9% interest rate.

Overall, this is an interesting IPO to watch because of the size, and the timing. It is getting launched at a time when the markets are at reasonable valuations, but the volumes are quite thin. To add to that – India has been one of the worse IPO markets globally in the last year, so the environment is a bit jittery. The government has lined up a series of disinvestment candidates later in the year, so the performance of this IPO will affect the timing of the other ones down the line.

Best Mutual Funds, Fake Apple Stores and Toilets

First, Anil Kumar Kapila who is a regular commenter here and other finance blogs as well has given some great input to Hemant to create a very good post about selecting the best mutual fund for SIP.

They have put in quite a lot of details in the post, and it’s definitely worth checking out.

Next, BeMoneyAware have a free e-book about basic financial planning that you can download here. You can download this in chapters, or the whole book.

I read the first chapter which is about 19 pages, and learned a few facts about the size of our currency notes, and the number of currencies in the world that I wasn’t aware of.

If you follow me on Twitter – you probably see that I tweet about different kind of numbers fairly often, so I definitely found something of interest in the first chapter.

Have you read about China’s fake Apple stores yet? It’s an incredible read – it seems that some companies have created fake Apple shops which sell real retail products, and they are so convincing that even some of the employees really think that they work for Apple!

Equally amazing are these portraits made of pencil shavings!

Bill Gates has been talking and writing about re-inventing the toilet for quite some time now, and here’s the latest on that.

Finally, the best piece I’ve read this week is the profile of Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, which is the biggest hedge fund in the world.

That’s it for this week – enjoy your weekend!

Who is most like Apple?

A couple of days ago @gkjohn Tweeted this out:

Has there ever been a parallel in consumer electronic history to Apple’s growth in the last decade?

My first reaction to this question was probably Sony. When I thought about consumer electronics, the most successful company I could think of was Sony, and I thought they might have done something close to what Apple had done in the last decade.

Now, I’m not sure what GK John had in mind, but I was narrowly looking at this from the point of view of stock returns. Google Finance tells us that Apple returned an awesome 3,776% in the last decade!

Has Sony ever done this?

A quick search in Google Finance showed me that in no decade did Sony perform such a feat.

That made me think if anyone else has ever done this, and I started looking for the best performing stocks in the last decade. For this exercise I stuck to US stocks just because Apple is an American company.

A quick search brought up this Bespoke research which shows the best performing stock for the decade ending 2009.

These companies are not as big as Apple, but some of them have market capitalization of over a billion dollars, so they aren’t exactly small either.

Again, there is no question that they don’t have anywhere near as powerful a brand as Apple, but if you were just looking for stock returns – there were other companies that could have done it for you.

Last, I wondered if Microsoft has ever had such a great decade in its life? It’s been going downhill for a few years, but surely in its history it must have done something spectacular like this?

In the last 10 years Microsoft has gone down 21%, but from Jan 05 1990 to Mar 31 2000 it rose a staggering 8,883%!

Now, isn’t that something?

Now, question for you – Is Microsoft most like Apple? And is this a good lead to write a post about the Recency Effect?

How to invest in NCDs and Bonds?

This is another post from the Suggest a Topic page, and this time we’re going to take a look at Swaroop’s question on how you can buy bonds or NCDs (Non Convertible Debentures).

NCDs list on the stock market, and like shares and mutual funds, you can either buy them before listing, or you can buy them from the stock exchange after they list.

How to buy NCDs before they list?

1. Buy them online: In a lot of cases – online brokers like ICICI Direct, Sharekhan, Edelweiss etc. allow you to apply for NCDs from their websites.

Applying for them online is convenient, and will probably be the first choice for most people. However, there is no guarantee that every online broker will have the option available right on day 1, and in case the bonds are being allotted on the basis of first come – first serve, this will make the difference in case of over – subscription.

If you are interested in buying them online then keep an eye on your broker’s website to see the announcement for availability of these bonds, and check that frequently.

2. Apply offline through a bank: This is probably the most popular method of buying NCDs, and involves the good old way of filling up an application form, writing a check and then submitting it in a collection center or a bank.

It’s a good idea to do this on the first day of opening of the issue because of the first come first serve thing I mentioned earlier, and you need to get the receipt and the application number because when the bonds are allotted later on, you will need the application number to check the allotment status online.

3. Approach a financial adviser: If you think you’re going to be investing a large chunk of change in these bonds, and others to come later on in the year, then it might be worth your while to get some professional advice and approach a financial adviser who can consult you on current and future NCD issues, and assist you in getting the bonds.

These are three ways in which you can buy bonds before they list on the stock exchange. Buying them during the offer period ensures that you get them at par value, and don’t have to pay extra if they list at a premium later on.

After NCDs list, you can buy them from the stock exchange through your broker.

How to buy NCDs after they list?

Usually, a company issues NCDs with differing maturities, and cumulative, and annual interest option at the same time. If you have a bond issue with two maturities, and a cumulative and annual option then this translates into 2 x 2 or 4 options for the investors, and these list separately on the market.

Since retail bonds or NCDs are a relatively new product, there aren’t a whole lot of volumes on them. In fact, you will see many NCDs that have zero volumes for the day or as far out as a week or sometimes even a month. In cases, where you do see volumes, the spread might be high.

Therefore it’s important for you to place limit orders, and not market orders while buying bonds, so you don’t accidentally end up paying more than what you wanted.

I’ve never bought retail bonds from the stock market, but I see that ICICI Direct gives you the option to buy them from their Equity tab. If you search for SBI in the “Find Stock Quote” area, they give you a series of listed SBI bonds, stocks and ETFs. You can then go ahead, and select one of the series, and ask for a quote, and see a screen that shows you the trading details, and in the next screen you can go ahead and enter price and quantity etc.

The way this is set up right now makes it a little hard for investors, and you will need to know which bonds you want to buy, and is it the same as the one that’s being offered to you.

For example, the screenshot above says it’s the SBI Bonds Series 1, Lower Tier 2, 9.25%Y option. From my older post on the SBI Retail Bonds, I recognize them to be bonds from the last issue. However, there were some names there that I didn’t recognize, and I would have had to do some more research to see which bonds they were, and what were their features.

This is where a knowledgeable broker, or adviser who has done these transactions hundreds of time will come in handy because I certainly don’t know much about this.

Conclusion

Retail bonds and NCDs that list on the market are here to stay, and will pick up popularity as more and more of these are issued, and more people get used to the idea of of buying bonds from the stock market. With time, there will be a lot more information, the volumes will be high, and things will hopefully be a little simpler as well.

It’s good for us to see this market evolve and learn the nuances, so that we have an edge when the market matures and stabilizes in a couple of years.