ICICI Prudential
Life Time Super Pension sold WRONGLY

I am an NRI, a student actually. I was trying to find a good investment p[lan for some money I had saved up from my stipends, I wanted part to be in FDs and part to be in mutual funds. ICICI lied to me that the only option I had was the Lifetime super pension policy and that I could not directly hold in mutual funds otherwise. This is bullshit ofcourse, but I was completely new to the indian market then and I just took their word as I was on a one week trip to India. further, they did not inform me of the lock in period and the fact that the surrender value of these funds at the end of first or even second/third year is so low (0 percent, 25 percent and 40 percent!). this was sold to me as a short term policy, and all my savings put into it. whereas, the policy is actually a minimum 5 year (for full surrender) policy. Moreover, their entry loads are so unreasonably high! you can get a good index fund for 1 percent and these guys do just about as well if not worse, and charge you 14 percent, 9 percent and then 1 percent every subsequent year!

Lastly, I had asked for the balancer scheme, a scheme in which my money would mostly be under debt and partly in equities, but the agent who filled out my form wrote in maximiser, which was 80 percent equity exposure and not the risk I was willing to take (and I took the recent beating from the crash too without any idea that I was!). I had not suspected someone would do this, as I did not know in India, we still have this crappy system of brokers and agents selling us plans, and getting a larger commission and cut from selling as high equity exposure plans. I am not sure if there is anyway to complain and get my money out of this fradulent scheme, I have been contacting ICICI customer service in vain for the past three months. I keep having to hold endlessly (over half an hour, which is very hard on an ISD call) and each time I am transferred to someone new who pretends not to understand my problem.

If anyone has any pointers on what to do, that would be great!

Thanks!