A strong financial plan is not built only around protection. It must also account for wealth creation,continuity of income and long-term financial stability across changing life stages
Vikas Gupta, Chief Product Officer, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company
Mother’s Day is often about celebrating the care, strength, and sacrifices that mothers bring into every stage of family life. From planning for a child’s education and future milestones to managing daily family responsibilities, mothers are often the emotional and financial anchors of their households.
Yet in the process of securing everyone else’s future, many women delay planning for their own health, protection, and long-term financial security.
Motherhood and financial planning
Motherhood often changes the way women approach financial planning. For many women,motherhood marks an important shift in financial priorities. It also coincides with changing responsibilities, career pauses, and increased caregiving responsibilities, making financial preparedness even more important.
Thus, financial planning becomes more future-oriented, with greater focus on a child’s education, healthcare needs, lifestyle stability, and long-term financial security.
According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023–24 1 , women’s workforce participation in India stands at 41.7%, reflecting their growing role in financial decision-making and family finances. However, while many mothers actively plan for their family’s future, planning for their own financial security often gets delayed.
As more women actively contribute towards household finances and long-term financial goals, it is paramount they financially secure themselves too.
Preparing for the future also means preparing for uncertainties
Long-term financial planning focuses on milestones and aspirations. But unexpected disruptions such as a medical emergency or a critical illness can cause interruption of regular income and can significantly affect plans if adequate financial protection is not in place.
For instance, a prolonged medical treatment or recovery period can force young mothers to dip into savings originally meant for child education or some other long-term financial goals. This is where life insurance becomes an important part of financial planning not just for protection, but for maintaining continuity and financial confidence during uncertain phases of life.
Why protection planning needs to become more comprehensive
The financial impact of a critical illness often extends well beyond hospitalisation expenses.Recovery periods, income disruption and ongoing care requirements can affect broader financial goals if these risks are not planned for adequately.This is where the critical illness coverage and additional protection benefits offered by life insurers can play an important role in helping women navigate financial uncertainties more effectively.
For instance, leading life insurers have specialised health products catering to women specific critical illnesses and surgeries. These health products offer an instant payout of up to 100% of the health cover amount on diagnosis of critical illnesses like breast, cervical, uterine cancers and heart ailments.
Thus, empowering women to be financially prepared by offering a lump sum payout to cover medical exigencies.
Planning for financial continuity across life stages
A strong financial plan is not built only around protection. It must also account for wealth creation,continuity of income and long-term financial stability across changing life stages.
Unit-Linked Insurance plans offered by life insurers are solutions that combine life cover with disciplined market-linked investment opportunities, allowing customers to gradually build a financial corpus from disciplined investing. Over the time, the power of compounding helps families realise goals such as children’s education, home ownership or other important milestones.
Insurance solutions become especially important while planning for retirement. Financial independence in later years depends not only on creating savings, but also on ensuring access to stable income over time.
Most retirees seek steady and stable income, which can only be offered by annuity products. For many women today, retirement planning takes a back seat vis-à-vis their family’s financial needs. However, retirement planning in early
stages of life is important.
For instance, if a 30-year-old non-smoker woman invests in an annuity plan to secure her retirement, which requires an annual investment of ₹1 lakh while she retires at 60, assuming a rate of return of 10%, she would have an accumulated corpus of approximately ₹1.25 crore. Whereas if she delays retirement planning and starts at the age of 40 her annual investment would almost double to ₹2.44 lakh to build the same corpus.
To conclude, Mother’s Day serves as a reminder that while mothers spend years planning for their families’ future, protecting their own financial future is equally important. While a mother spends her life securing her children’s future, the greatest gift children can give in return is her financial security.
After all, protecting the future is not only about preparing for milestones, but also about ensuring continuity, financial stability and confidence through every stage of life including the years beyond active income, especially for Mother’s for whom family’s interest is always first.