Mutual Fund vs. Life Insurance: Behavioral Analysis of Retail Investors

During the post 1990 period, service sector in most of the Asian economies witnessed growth fueled by significant changes in their financial sector. India is now being ranked as one of the fastest growing economy of the world. During last one decade or so, role of Indian insurance and mutual fund industry as a significant financial service in financial market has really been noteworthy. In fact since 1992, a number of research studies have underlined the importance of these two in the Indian capital market environment as important investment vehicles. But the existing ‘Behavioral Finance’ studies on factors influencing selection of mutual fund and life insurance schemes are very few and very little information is available about investor perceptions, preferences, attitudes and behavior. Yet again, perhaps no efforts are made to analyze and compare the selection behavior of Indian retail investors towards mutual funds and life insurances particularly in post-liberalization period. With this background this paper makes an earnest attempt to study the behavior of the investors in the selection of these two investment vehicles in an Indian perspective by making a comparative study.