Editorial and methodology policy

Our editorial principles

1. Show the workings. Every plan page states the calibration point and the discount rate used to price it. If you disagree with an assumption, you can see it and judge it.
2. Separate guaranteed from projected. Bonus is never presented as a promise. Every maturity result breaks out the guaranteed sum assured from the reversionary bonus and Final Additional Bonus.
3. Say when a product is poor value. We have no commercial interest in any plan. Where the arithmetic says return-of-premium term cover is expensive, or that a headline "8% income" is not an 8% return, we say so.
4. Advertising never touches content. There is no advertising on the site today. If there is, no advertiser will see a page before it is published, and no plan will be ranked or described differently because of it.
5. Record absence as absence. Where we have not read a document, the page says so instead of filling the gap with a plausible figure. A plan we hold no rider brochure for shows no rider premiums, which is a different statement from a plan that has no riders, and the data behind the site keeps the two apart.
6. Correct errors in public. When we get something wrong we fix it and note it on the page. The section below on where this model is weakest is that principle applied to the model itself.

How the premium model works

Most LIC calculators online run one endowment formula behind every page. We do not, because the plans genuinely differ. The engine here works in four steps.

Step 1: build the cash-flow schedule

For a given age, term, premium paying term and sum assured, we construct the plan's actual schedule of payments per ₹1,000 of sum assured: the death benefit in every policy year (including accrued bonus or guaranteed additions and LIC's "higher of 7 times annualised premium / 105% of premiums paid" floor), every survival payout at the year it falls due, and the maturity value. A money back plan gets its real payout years. Jeevan Anand gets the whole-life cover that continues after maturity. Jeevan Umang gets fifty years of 8% survival benefit.

Step 2: discount it on a mortality basis

Each year's cash flow is weighted by the probability of the life reaching it and discounted for time. Mortality comes from a single table shared across the site, indicative of the LIC (2012-14) Ultimate table used for pricing in India, graduated forward beyond age 70 for the whole-life and annuity plans. Some plans scale that table: medically underwritten term buyers experience materially lighter mortality than the population, and pricing them off the population table would overstate their premium substantially.

Step 3: calibrate to a reference premium

This step is what pins the model to something checkable. For each plan we fix a reference premium at a specific age, term and premium paying term, then solve by bisection for the discount rate at which our model reproduces it exactly. Every other combination of age and term is priced on that same calibrated basis, so the shape of the curve is actuarially consistent while the level is pinned to a single checkable number.

Choosing that reference well is the part that decides whether the whole plan is right, so it is constrained twice. It has to sit in the range of LIC's published tabular rates for the plan, and the benefits it funds have to imply a policyholder return LIC actually delivers: around 5.5% for the participating endowment and money back plans, near 4.8% for the non-participating guaranteed-addition plans, and about 6% for single premium contracts. Those two constraints agree when the reference is right and disagree when it is not, which is how we catch a bad one.

A second script solves, for every plan, the reference premium that would produce its target return and flags any plan that has drifted. Both scripts are in the repository and run against the same engine the calculators use.

Step 4: apply LIC's rebates in LIC's order

The high sum assured rebate is deducted from the rate per thousand first; the mode adjustment is then applied to what remains: on older plans a rebate of 2% yearly and 1% half-yearly, on term plans a 2% half-yearly loading, and on plans that print conversion factors those factors. Getting that order backwards changes the answer, and some calculators do get it backwards.

Calibration reference table

The anchor point and resulting discount rate for every savings and protection plan on the site. A verification script runs against these on every build and fails if any plan stops reproducing its anchor.

Annuity plans are calibrated the same way, but per option rather than per plan, against published annuity rates per ₹1,000 of purchase price at a reference age. Options that return the purchase price on death are additionally graduated by age: such an annuity is economically close to interest-only, so its pure actuarial rate barely moves with age, while LIC's published scale rises because its loadings are recovered over a shortening annuity term.

How the figures are checked

Publishing the assumptions is one half of the job. Testing them is the other, and five scripts do it against the same engine that runs the calculators. They live in the repository and run on every build.

• Anchor reproduction. Every plan is re-priced at its own calibration point and compared with the reference premium in the table above. All 39 reproduce their anchor exactly. A plan that stops doing so fails the build rather than shipping quietly.
• Brochure comparison. Where LIC prints a sample illustrative premium in a plan brochure we transcribe it and price the same policy. Thirty-five points across five plans at the last run. The results are below, the unflattering ones included.
• Eligibility comparison. Entry ages, policy terms and minimum sums assured are checked back against each plan's own eligibility table, so the form cannot accept a combination LIC does not sell.
• Source links. Every official link on the site is fetched and has to resolve. Sixty-six of them at the last run, all resolving. A dead link to a brochure breaks the citation it was there to support.
• Internal links. Every link between pages here is resolved at build time, 8,042 of them across 69 pages.

Where the model is weakest

The brochure comparison is the honest test of all this, and this is what it currently says. Across 323 published premiums the mean deviation is 2.8%, 85% of the points land inside 5%, 53% inside 2%, and the worst is 33.3% out. Those are not flattering numbers, and they are here because a methodology page that reported only the good ones would be worth nothing. Every figure in this section is computed when the page is built, from the same two inputs the test uses, so it cannot drift away from what the test would say today.

Plan by plan it is less uniform than the average makes it sound. The three closest are Jeevan Utsav Single Premium (mean 0.7% across 9 points), Nav Jeevan Shree (mean 0.8% across 9 points) and Digi Term (mean 0.8% across 3 points). The single worst reading anywhere is 33.3% on Saral Jeevan Bima, age 45 over 25 years: that plan is exact at the age it is calibrated on and drifts hard in both directions either side, which is what fitting a whole term structure to one anchor costs when the underlying rate curve is steep.

One entry used to sit at 53% out, roughly half LIC's figure at every age: New Money Back Plan 25 Years. That was not the model. The plan's sales brochure prints its sample premium grid under the heading "Basic Sum Assured of Rs 1 lakh" while the eligibility table on its own second page sets the minimum Basic Sum Assured for the plan at ₹2 lakh, so the policy the grid describes cannot exist. Read as a ₹2 lakh policy the same rupee figures imply ₹61 to ₹71 per ₹1,000 and total premiums of 1.26 times the sum assured, in line with the 20-year money back plan; read as ₹1 lakh they imply ₹123 to ₹143 and 2.5 times, which no LIC savings plan does. We had transcribed the heading rather than the arithmetic. The comparison now records ₹2 lakh, the plan's rebate bands have been corrected against section 7 of the same brochure, and its calibration is anchored on the printed age-30 figure, which it now reproduces exactly.

The shape of the error is the same everywhere: the model is closest at the age and term it was calibrated on, and drifts furthest at older entry ages and shorter terms, where LIC's tabular rate climbs fastest. Use these figures to compare plans against each other and to sanity-check a quotation you have already been given. The premium you will actually be charged comes from LIC, after underwriting.

Comparing plans across different terms

Wherever we compare plans, the headline comparison is the internal rate of return on your own cash flows, premiums out, survival benefits and maturity in. A return multiple cannot compare a 20-year endowment against a whole-life plan running to age 100: thirteen times your money over seventy years is a far worse deal than twice your money over twenty, and a multiple hides that completely. The rupee totals we show alongside are nominal and not adjusted for inflation, and we say so wherever they appear.

Plan facts, and where to check them

Plan numbers, UINs, entry ages, terms and benefit structures come from LIC's own page for each plan. Every plan page here carries a link straight to it, next to the facts table, so you can check what we say against the source rather than take our word for it.

LIC states the plan number and UIN in the page title for most plans but not all. Where it does, we say we checked them and give the date. Where it does not, we say those two rows are unconfirmed rather than implying otherwise. And where a plan no longer has a live page on licindia.in, there is no link, and those plans are described from their policy documentation and should be treated with more caution.

Checking this in September 2026 corrected sixteen facts on this site: eight plan numbers and eight UINs. LIC's page slugs and titles use plan numbers in the 7xx range for several plans widely cited elsewhere as 9xx. New Jeevan Anand is 715 on LIC's own page, not 915. We follow LIC. Our search still finds those plans by either number, because people search for both.

Bonus and guaranteed addition rates

Reversionary bonus rates are one flat rate per plan and term band, stated on every plan page. They are this site's compilation, believed to be LIC's 2023-24 declaration, and we have not found an LIC document that publishes them. LIC's year-end public disclosures for 2022 to 2025 carry no plan-wise bonus table; its last one, for the 31 March 2021 valuation, covers the plans of that time. Later declarations are reported to add sum assured slabs (a higher rate from ₹5 lakh, and on Jeevan Labh a further step from ₹10 lakh); those are not on the site, because we have not found them in a document LIC itself publishes, and third-party transcriptions of them disagree with each other. Maturity figures may therefore be understated on larger policies. Guaranteed addition schedules for the non-participating plans are taken from the plan's own contractual terms.

Final Additional Bonus follows one modelled term-based scale for every participating plan: nothing below 15 years, then rising steeply, roughly ₹90 per ₹1,000 at 20 years, ₹210 at 25, ₹465 at 30. LIC does declare FAB rates per plan and term with each valuation; this site does not carry those tables yet, and the published per-plan figures we have seen sit well below this scale for some plans on 15 to 20 year terms. Treat FAB here as the least certain part of any maturity figure. The scale is capped for the very long terms that whole-life plans produce.

Projections hold the rate used flat for the whole term. That is the convention LIC's own benefit illustrations use, and it is an assumption rather than a forecast. Only the sum assured and contractual guaranteed additions are guaranteed.

Where the surrender value figures come from

The Guaranteed Surrender Value follows the grid LIC prints in the New Jeevan Anand (715) brochure, which is the minimum the IRDAI (Insurance Products) Regulations, 2024 set for policies sold from 1 October 2024: a percentage of the total premiums paid, first year included, that is nil in year one, 30% in year two, 35% in year three, 50% from year four to year seven, and rises to 90% in the final two years. Vested bonus is surrendered at a separate, lower factor read off the same brochure. The Guaranteed Surrender Value needs two full years' premiums; the Special Surrender Value is available once one full year's premium is paid and the first policy year is complete.

The Special Surrender Value is modelled on the IRDAI 2024 basis: the paid-up value of the policy, discounted to the present at a yield close to the current government securities curve. LIC's own SSV factors are discretionary and not published in full, so this figure is more approximate than the GSV. Always ask your servicing branch for a written quotation.

How riders are priced

No LIC plan brochure prints rider rates. Every one of them says to read the rider brochure or ask a branch, which is why most calculators either leave riders out or attach a hidden default to a tick box. We read the five rider brochures instead, and every rider figure on this site comes out of them.

Two things set a rider premium and only one of them is obvious. The size follows the rider's own sum assured, as you would expect. What is easy to miss is that the same rider costs different amounts depending on how the base policy is paid for. Each brochure prints its regular premium table first and the limited and single premium tables further down the same page, and they are a long way apart. The term assurance rider for a 30-year-old on a 20-year policy costs ₹258 a year per ₹1,00,000 of rider cover on a regular premium plan, ₹403 on a limited premium one paid over ten years, and ₹2,852 as a single payment on a single premium one. Reading only the first table understates every limited premium plan and is out by a factor of eleven on a single premium one.

Where LIC states one rate for everyone we use it, and the result page says the figure is LIC's own. Where LIC publishes a sample grid at round ages and terms, a figure between grid points is interpolated in a straight line and the page labels it as an estimate. Only the Accident Benefit rider turned out to carry a single rate whatever the base policy: "Rs. 0.50 per thousand Accident Benefit Sum Assured irrespective of age", with no second table anywhere in its brochure.

The ceilings are applied as the brochures set them. The Accident Benefit rider runs to three times the base sum assured; every other rider stops at the base sum assured itself. Each also carries an absolute limit, aggregated across every policy the life assured holds: ₹1 crore for accidental death and disability, accident benefit and critical illness, and ₹25 lakh for term assurance. The smaller of the two limits is the one that applies. Premiums for all riders together cannot exceed 30% of the base premium, and each plan page states what that comes to in rupees for the policy it is showing.

The premium waiver rider is priced on the proposer's age rather than the life assured's, which is the detail most often got wrong. It exists to waive the premiums if the person paying them dies, so the person paying them is the life it has to rate.

How the charts are drawn

The charts on the plan pages and the home page are generated at build time by the same functions that price the calculators, and they are drawn as inline vector graphics rather than saved as picture files. That is deliberate. A chart saved as an image can disagree with the table beside it the moment a rate changes, and a generated one cannot: change a bonus rate in the plan data and the picture moves with the table. It also means a chart is never a second source of truth, only the same figures drawn.

Where a chart normalises its figures so that two series of very different sizes can share an axis, it says so and prints the original amounts in the caption. Every caption names the policy the chart is drawn for and the rate it is priced from.

Taxes

Individual life insurance premiums have been exempt from GST since 22 September 2025, so premiums shown on this site carry no GST. Where we describe Section 80C, Section 10(10D) or Section 194DA (from 1 April 2026, Section 123, Schedule II and Section 393 of the Income-tax Act, 2025), we are describing our understanding of current Indian tax law in general terms, not giving tax advice.

What we do not model

• Underwriting loadings for health, occupation, lifestyle or residence
• Unit linked plans, whose value follows a fund rather than a premium table, and micro insurance, whose brochures we have not read
• Campaign discounts, staff terms and online purchase rebates
• Policy loans, revival interest, and the effect of an outstanding loan on survival benefits
• Inflation. Every total on the site is nominal, and we say so where it matters

Rider premiums were on this list until we read the rider brochures. They are priced now, on the basis set out above, and this line stays as a record of the change.

How articles are written and reviewed

Articles are written in-house against the plan configurations that power the calculators, so a figure quoted in a guide comes from the same engine as the calculator it links to. We review each article when the underlying plan parameters change, when LIC declares a new bonus, or when tax law moves. The published and updated dates on each article are real.

We do not accept guest posts, sponsored articles or paid links.

Advertising policy

The site carries no advertising at present. The intention is to fund it that way, and the rules are set in advance: ad slots will be labelled "Advertisement", will reserve their space before load so the page does not shift under you, and will never be styled to resemble editorial content or calculator results. We do not take insurer commissions and no advertiser will have any input into content or rankings.

Corrections

If a figure here disagrees with an official LIC document, send us the plan, age, term, sum assured and both figures at hello@liccalculators.co.in. We treat those reports as the highest-priority input we receive: they are the only way to test the model against reality at scale. Material corrections are noted on the affected page.