Investor’s suitability for opting voluntary pension plans - using ahp model

The shift from the defined benefit to the defined contribution scheme in India has enveloped within its purview a lot of changes, the most essential being the attitude of the individuals towards planning for their retirement. The pension products offered by various life insurance companies was not considered much as a source of retirement saving due to the concept and existence of defined benefit system till 2003. Abolishment of defined benefit program combined with opening of the insurance market after the year 2000 to the private players gave rise to the increased purchase of these policies from the private companies. This paper basically deals with the selection of insurance companies based on various criteria’s like number of pension schemes offered by each company, the returns they provide to their customers, the flexibility in their investment options etc. So based on these criteria a weight is assigned to each of them and a final score is deduced with the help of Analytical Process Hierarchy and the companies are ranked based on their score. So looking into these scores an individual has to decide as to which company he/she has to invest his money to get higher returns and benefits.