Working women lag behind in financial protection; only 70% have life insurance: Survey

New Delhi: Working women in India are grossly under-protected as only 70 percent have life insurance as compared to 83 percent of their male peers, says a survey.According to a survey done by Max Life Insurance, the ownership of term insurance plans among women in metro cities stood at just 19 percent, as compared 22 percent men who own the pure protection insurance scheme."With 42 percent of their earnings being diverted to basic expenses as against working males in metros who spend 38 percent of their earnings to basic expenses, working women in metros tend to spend less on savings and investments," the report said.It further added that the savings objectives of working women in metros are more focused on saving for kids' education and less on old age security and untimely death of a breadwinner (only 33 percent saved for this).

According to the report, nearly 68 percent women feel that term plans are merely designed for the breadwinner.Ensuring financial protection of women is an extremely important concern considering they make up almost half the country's population, Max Life Insurance managing director Prashant Tripathy said."Aside from lack of awareness, the uptake of term insurance is relatively lower in women, due to the way they often approach insurance and investment. What is required is a fundamental shift in their savings and investments patterns and a greater realisation of benefits of term plans to empower a sense of financial protection," he said.It also highlighted that Indian women are yet to go online to buy life insurance. Only 3 percent buy insurance online compared to 7 percent urban men.The survey was conducted on 4,566 people across 15 metropolitan and tier one cities in India.