I work in a private school in Andhra Pradesh and draw a salary of Rs 24,000 a month. I need a sum of Rs 2.5 lakh as personal loan. I am staying in a rented house since 2006. Am I eligible for such a loan?

Most banks offer personal loan for a maximum tenure of four to five years and you will be eligible for the required amount provided you have no other loans to pay and have good credit record (if any). The interest rate is likely to be around 16 to 21 per cent depending on the company or the institution that you work for. The first step is to get in touch with lenders and get them to make loan offers to you. You can use price and feature comparison sites for this purpose. Negotiate with them to get the best interest rate and check if they have any special offers.

After selecting the lender, to start the loan process, the lender will require certain documents. Once the lender is satisfied with the veracity of your documents, the loan is approved. The lender will then disburse the amount through cheque or demand draft or direct credit to your bank account. My wife and I are government employees, In June 2010, we took a loan of Rs 10 lakh for constructing the ground and first floor of our house. But we ended up spending about Rs 20 lakh only for the ground floor. Our monthly net salary is Rs 45,000 and still we have 15 and 20 years of service. Can the bank enhance the housing loan by another Rs 5 lakh?

If you have maintained a good track record of repayment of the EMIs, you should normally have no difficulty in enhancing your loan limit from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh. If the existing lender is not willing to give you the additional loan, you can also look at shifting your loan to another lender who might be willing to take over the existing loan as well as provide an enhanced amount of Rs 5 lakh.

Do insurance companies pay for medical termination of pregnancy?

Some individual policies cover two deliveries or lawful medical terminations (with a limit on the total amount payable) or either during the lifetime of the insured but after a specific waiting period. So we would request you to read your policy document or ask your insurance agent for more details.
Check for how long have you had the policy and whether you qualify for the same. If you are covered by your employer you will need to check whether the group policy covers such expenditure.

I would like to know what I can do if my insurance claim is rejected. The policy was taken on May 15, 2008 and I was hospitalised in January 2010.
The reason for the hospitalisation must have fallen under some clause of permanent exclusions. The insurance company must have given you a document while they rejected the claim. You can verify the reason stated in that particular document with your policy wording, which was provided to you while buying the policy. In case, you are not satisfied with the claim rejection, you can make a complaint by logging on the official website of the insurance company. If you don’t get a satisfactory response from the insurance company, you can file a complaint with the Insurance Ombudsman, who will look in to the same. However you will need to prove the reasons for the long delay in appealing against the claim rejection. You can also use the grievance redressal machinery of IRDA by complaining on www.igms.irda.gov.in

Harsh Roongta is the CEO of Apnapaisa.com. You can send in your queries to movingmoney@deccanmail.com