Child Education Plans in Nepal (2026): What to Check Before You Buy One

A child plan – bal beema – is a life insurance policy a parent takes out with a child’s
future in mind. Nepali insurers do sell them, under a range of names, and they are not all the
same product underneath. Whether the one you have been shown is right for your family comes down
to four questions, and an agent’s illustration answers only the last of them by default.

First, work out what you are actually being offered

Look at the benefit illustration you were handed. Does it promise a maturity amount?

• Yes – you are being offered a savings product with life cover attached. Most child plans
  are. The comparison in the next section applies to you.
• No, only a payout on death – you are being offered term cover, and the next section does
  not apply. Term is the cheap option and the comparison is already in your favour.

That single question separates the two products more reliably than the plan’s name does. Names in
this market are marketing; the illustration is the contract.

Bal beema kinne ki, term + bachat? (Buy the child plan, or buy term and save separately?)

If the plan promises a maturity amount, the honest comparison is not this child plan versus
nothing. It is this plan versus buying the same protection as term insurance and putting the
difference somewhere you control.

Here is what the difference looks like. Our calculator prices a 35-year-old buying NPR 10 lakh
of cover for 20 years, and every figure below is calibrated to that insurer’s own quote at that
exact point:

Eleven of the fourteen insurers quote both products at that comparison point. Across those eleven
the savings plan costs between 4.9x and 15.9x the term plan, and the middle of the range is
11x – that is Himalayan Life above, which sits exactly at the median. National Life is the
narrowest gap of the eleven and Reliable Nepal Life the widest; we have shown you both ends rather
than a comfortable middle.

The three that are missing, and why – because a comparison that quietly drops a third of the
market is not a comparison:

• Asian Life – its term plan runs to a maximum of 15 years, so there is no 20-year term quote
  to compare against.
• LIC Nepal – its term plan starts at NPR 25 lakh of cover, above the 10 lakh used here.
• Citizen Life – does not sell an individual term plan at all.

None of those is a mark against the insurer. They are product boundaries, and they are the reason
we quote eleven and say so rather than quoting fourteen and hoping nobody checks.

And 11x is the conservative version of the gap. That comparison uses a 20-year term, because
20 years is the point every insurer’s quote is calibrated to. But a parent buying protection until
a child finishes school often wants a shorter term – eleven or twelve years, not twenty. At
those lengths the savings premiumThe regular payment you make to keep your insurance policy active. Full definition → rises (the same maturity value has to be funded in fewer years)
while the term premium falls, so the multiple gets larger. At an 11-year term the middle of the
range is around 24x, not 11x. Put your own term into the
premium calculator rather than treating
11x as fixed.

What the multiple does not tell you. The savings plan gives you money back at maturity and the
term plan gives you nothing back – that is the trade, and for some families it is a fair one. The
point of the number is not that one product wins. It is that the gap is large enough that where
the difference goes is the real decision, and nobody’s illustration shows you that side of it.
Both products are compared properly on our term vs endowment comparison
and in Term Insurance vs Endowment Insurance in Nepal.

Question 1 – whose name is on the policy?

A child plan can be written two ways: you as the policyholder with the child as beneficiary,
or the child as the life assured. They are not interchangeable, and two things turn on which
one you sign.

Tax. Life insurance premiums are deductible in Nepal up to NPR 40,000 a year (Income Tax
Act 2058) – the lower of your actual premium or 40,000. Whether a policy written in a child’s
name counts towards your deduction is a question to settle before you sign, not at tax time:
ask the insurer, or whoever files your return, whose deduction it is. Our
tax deduction calculator works out
what the cap is worth at your slab.

Control. Ask who owns and controls the policy – who can surrender it, borrow against it or
change the nomineeThe person who receives the insurance payout when you die. Full definition → – and whether that changes when the child becomes an adult. Ask which structure
you are signing, and ask for it in writing before you pay the first premium – not after.

Question 2 – what happens to the plan if you die?

This is the question a child plan exists to answer, and it is the one most worth asking out loud.

The purpose of saving for a child’s education through insurance rather than through a bank account
is that insurance can keep going when the earner cannot. The feature that does this is called a
premium waiver (sometimes waiver of premium, or a payor benefit): if the parent paying the
premiums dies, the insurer pays the remaining premiums and the plan still matures on schedule for
the child.

A plan without it is a savings account with a policy document. If the parent dies in year
three of a twenty-year plan, the family has to keep funding it themselves out of a household that
has just lost its income – which is the exact circumstance the plan was sold to protect against.

So we checked. On 13 November 2026 we read one child-plan page on each of the 14 licensed life
insurers’ own websites. All 14 show a premium waiver. On 13 of them the page states outright
that premiums are waived if the parent (the "proposer") dies during the term; the fourteenth
offers a waiver-of-premium benefit for an extra charge. How it is offered differs:

Three cautions before you rely on that. We read one plan per insurer; another child plan from
the same company can differ, and so can versions of the same plan. The conditions differ too –
some pages extend the waiver to the parent’s permanent disability, and some add a monthly income
for the child. And a web page is not your contract. Ask whether the waiver is included or
optional on the plan you are being shown, what it costs if it is optional, and check that it
appears in your policy document.

Question 3 – what happens if you stop paying?

A plan bought when a child is two is a commitment until that child is in their twenties. Household
income over twenty years is not a straight line, and the rules for what happens when payments stop
are set by regulation, not by the agent:

• Before two years of premiums are paid, the policy has not yet acquired a paid-up value.
• After two years, an unpaid policy converts automatically to paid-up – it continues at a
  reduced sum assuredThe coverage amount your family receives on death — or you receive at maturity. Full definition → rather than being cancelled.
• Surrender valueThe amount you get back if you cancel your policy early. Full definition → begins after three years. Before that, stopping means the plan has no cash
  value to return to you.
• Revival is your right at any time within the policy term, on proof of insurability plus
  arrears and a late fee.

(NIA Directive 2079. These are your rights, not a concession – the full set is on
your rights as a policyholder, and the
surrender calculator shows what a policy is worth
if you do stop.)

The practical reading: the first three years are the fragile ones. If there is a realistic
chance the premium becomes unaffordable inside three years, a smaller premium you will certainly
keep paying beats a larger one you might not.

Question 4 – what is guaranteed, and what is only expected?

An illustration for a savings-type plan usually shows two things added together: a guaranteed
sum assured written into the contract, and a bonusExtra money declared annually by the insurer on top of your sum assured. Full definition → that is declared by the insurer each year
out of that year’s results. Only the first is a promise.

Bonus rates differ between insurers, differ between plans at the same insurer, and are not fixed
for the life of the policy. Ask which line of the illustration is contractual and which is
projected – the benefit illustration is required to separate them. Published rates for all 14 are
in life insurance bonus rates in Nepal.

One piece of context worth having before the conversation, not as a reason to distrust anyone.
Regulation caps first-year commission at up to 25% for savings-type plans and up to 10% for
term, dropping to around 5% from year three (Insurance Regulation 2081, Schedule 9). The same
agent earns more from the savings product because the regulation permits more – that is a fact
about how the products are structured, not about the person in front of you. Agents work inside a
commission structure they did not design. Knowing its shape just means you can ask better
questions. How it all works is on our agent guide.

What we can tell you, and what we cannot

We compare fourteen licensed life insurers across four product types: term, endowment, whole
life and money back. Child plans are not one of them. Our calculator will not quote you a child
plan, and this article names none, for one reason: we have not verified the pricing of a single
one against the insurer’s own quote, and we will not publish a number we have not checked.

That gap is honest rather than accidental, and it has a visible edge – on some company review
pages the minimum entry age shows as 0 years, which comes from child plans existing in an
insurer’s range and reads oddly next to an adult product. Treat the entry ages on those pages as
the company’s overall range, not the range for the plan you are looking at.

What we can do is price the adult products properly, which is what the comparison above rests
on, and give you the questions that make a child-plan illustration readable.

So how much should the policy actually be for?

Start from the number, not from the product. A child’s education fund is one line in a family’s
total need – alongside years of household expenses, any outstanding loan, and what you have
already saved.

Work out your family’s number first, then go shopping for the product that fits it. Our
need assessment calculator
takes an education fund per child as a direct input, along with your expenses, loans and existing
cover, and gives you a figure. Buying the policy first and discovering the number afterwards is
how families end up both over-committed on premium and under-covered on protection.

Frequently asked

Is a child plan the best way to save for my child’s education in Nepal?
It is one way. The honest comparison is against buying term cover for the same protection and
saving the difference separately – at the standard comparison point (age 35, NPR 10 lakh, 20
years), a savings-type plan costs between 4.9 and 15.9 times the term premium across the eleven
insurers that quote both, with 11 times in the middle. The savings plan returns money at maturity
and term does not. Which trade suits you depends on whether you will actually save the difference.

Bal beema ma bacchako naam rakhne ki aafno? (Should the policy be in my child’s name or mine?)
Ask before you sign, because tax and control both follow the answer. The deduction of up to NPR
40,000 a year is claimed by a taxpayer on a policy, so ask whose deduction it will be, and ask who
controls the policy once the child becomes an adult.

What happens to my child’s plan if I die?
If the plan carries a premium waiver, the insurer waives the remaining premiums and the plan
still matures as planned. Every child-plan page we read on the 14 insurers’ websites shows one –
part of the plan on most, an optional extra on some. Without it, your family must keep paying. Ask for it
by name and check it appears in the policy document.

What if I cannot afford the premium after a few years?
After two years of premiums the policy converts to paid-up at a reduced sum assured rather than
being cancelled, and surrender value begins after three years. You can revive a lapsed policy at
any time within the term with arrears and a late fee (NIA Directive 2079). The first three years
are the ones to plan around.

Do Nepali insurers actually sell child plans?
Yes. All 14 licensed life insurers showed at least one child plan on their own websites when we
checked on 13 November 2026. We do not price them, because we have not verified their pricing against
the insurers’ own quotes – and we would rather say so than publish a number we cannot stand behind.