How this catalogue works

Where the numbers come from

All five categories carry product records. Government schemes and government securities show a rate with the date it applied and a link to where it came from — small-savings rates are notified each quarter, while bond yields are pulled from the RBI by a refresh job.

Mutual funds and ETFs show the published NAV from AMFI's daily file. Bank deposits are the exception: the rate depends on the bank, the tenure and the deposit slab, so each entry links straight to that bank's own rate card rather than quoting a number that would be wrong for most readers.

What we do

Describe how a product works, in the same fields for every entry.
Show the trade-offs plainly: lock-in, access, tax, and what can go wrong.
Link to the regulator or provider where the actual rules live.
Date every page, because rates and rules change.

What we do not do

We do not recommend products, or say what you should buy or sell.
We do not ask for money, take payments, or offer subscriptions.
We do not quote rates we cannot verify from a primary source.
We do not ask for your personal or financial details.

The three return types

Every product is filed under one of these. It is the single most useful thing to establish before reading further.

Guaranteed

Fixed by contract

The amount you get back is stated in the product's terms when you open it. It does not move with markets or with how the provider performs.

Fixed deposits, savings certificates and government small-savings schemes usually sit here. The guarantee is only as strong as the institution behind it: a bank deposit is insured up to a limit, while a government scheme rests on the issuer. Guaranteed does not mean inflation-proof — the money you get back can buy less than it does today.

Ask yourself

Is the rate fixed for the whole tenure, or revised during it?
Who is actually promising to pay, and what happens if they don't?
What does closing early cost?

Conditional

Depends on terms being met

There is a payout structure, but the amount depends on conditions — a reference rate, a minimum holding period, a bonus that applies only if you stay to the end, or a market level at a specific date.

Floating-rate deposits, some annuities and structured products behave this way. The capital may be protected while the return is not, or the headline rate may apply only in the final year. Read the conditions rather than the number: the number is usually the best case.

Ask yourself

Which conditions have to be true for me to get the stated return?
What do I get if those conditions are not met?
Who decides whether they were met, and can I check it?

Market-linked

No promised return

The value of your investment moves with the market. There is no promised return and no capital guarantee — the amount you get back depends on the price when you sell.

Mutual funds, ETFs and equity shares work this way. Long holding periods have historically reduced the chance of a loss, but they do not remove it, and past performance of an index or a fund is not a forecast. Costs matter more here, because they are charged whether or not the market rises.

Ask yourself

What exactly does this hold, and what would make it fall?
Can I leave this money invested if it drops 30%?
What am I paying in expenses and exit loads?

How a product gets published

Products are never written straight into the website. They move through a small, deliberate pipeline, and each stage is visible in the content files.

1
Research
A product record is drafted with its provider, terms, eligibility, tax position and risks, plus at least one source link.
draft
2
Check
A second person verifies each field against the source, and confirms no rate or guarantee is stated without one. The record is marked pending.
pending
3
Approve
An editor signs off, and the record carries the reviewer's name and the approval date. Only then can it be built into the site.
approved
4
Publish
The build reads only approved records. Anything in draft, pending or rejected is skipped — it cannot leak onto a page by accident.
live

Sources and verification

Each product lists the regulator or provider where its rules are set out — the RBI, SEBI, PFRDA, the Income Tax Department, NSE, AMFI and similar bodies. The link is to the authoritative page for that kind of product, because that is the page that is updated when a rule or rate changes.

Every entry carries a last verified date. If a page is more than six months old, treat its terms as possibly out of date and check the source.

Corrections

If a field is wrong, the record is corrected and the verification date updated. We would rather remove an entry than leave a claim we cannot stand behind.