Mention guaranteed returns, and most of us will line up to grab the offer, irrespective of what the product is or promises as returns. The deep rooted fondness for guaranteed products among Indians has been time and again milked by financial service providers. Just a month ago, in our December 2014 issue, we had done a feature on the curse of higher guaranteed returns from company fixed deposits. The guarantees offered on insurance policies are no different—they promise a high return but there is no easy way to ascertain the same. In insurance parlance, these are traditional plans, which are not unit-linked. Though they are more opaque on what they actually do with the money you pay as premium, yet they draw attention because they offer ‘guaranteed’ returns. Due to this guaranteed feature, they are also non-participatory these policies do not pay any bonus unlike endowment and money back plans, where bonuses are common.