Spoke to a Financial Advisor, consider endowment plans for my children. Illustrative benefits of 3% and 4.25% (seems vastly lower from 15years ago when I bought and it was 7ish%).

Unbelievable. Read the fine print, not guaranteed, for illustrations only, just like artist's impression you see For show flats in new property sales

It is neither a guarantee or an estimated rate of return.

https://www.lia.org.sg/tools-and-resources/illu...

The Upper Illustration Rate and the Lower Illustration Rate are used purely for illustrative purposes and do not represent upper and lower limits of the investment performance of an insurer’s Par Fund.

In addition, rates used in the PI are not a reflection of the actual returns of both existing and future Par policies. The actual returns received for a Par policy will depend on the actual experience, including investment performance, of the Par Fund that will develop over the lifetime of the Par policy.

You will do much better just DCA into S&P500.

No evidence till date that multi asset portfolio with bonds (which many endowment plans focus on) have outperform the S&P500

A lot of things (not only fund return) will change in 15years. Returns in all likehood should match the illustrations else why show the yield.

Likewise the industry market benchmark to beat for equities is the index (success/failure is dependent on a lot of other factors)