Insurance can walk the health and life journey with individuals because the insurance business has always been about the long term, with decisions grounded in projecting health risks, medical inflation, and ensuring sustainability over time, according to Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary (Policy and Development) Ms Lai Wei Lin.
Delivering the keynote address at the AIA Healthcare Summit 2026, held yesterday, Ms Lai addressed Singapore’s silver tsunami, noting that up to 20 years ago, it was about the number and proportion of Singaporeans aged 65 and above.
“Now, the sharp change that we see is the rise in the number and proportion of Singaporeans aged 80 years and above,” she said.
“All this is a result of our economic development and investments in public health and health care. Many have pondered what we want our longer lives to look like. We want the additional years to have purpose, to be spent with the people who mean a lot to us, and to be lived in good health and be able to maintain independence as much as possible.”
This can be achieved through closer public-private partnerships in three areas, she added.
1. Assurance for individuals throughout the course of life
Ms Lai said, "We should place individuals at the centre, and design our products and options in a way that aligns with their needs over their life course.
"Today, many working Singaporeans rely on a combination of employee medical benefits, or what we call EMBs, and their personal Integrated Shield Plans, or IPs. EMBs and IPs are significant pillars of health financing. Together, they account for about 15% of Singapore's Current Health Expenditure (CHE). As a comparison, Government spending is about 50%. Of this 15% share, IP payouts account for 5%; EMB accounts for the rest, 5% in the form of group health insurance, and 5% in the form of direct reimbursement from employers.
"As individuals retire and EMBs cease, IPs become their main source of healthcare protection in their old age. It is therefore important for IPs to be designed and chosen with the long term in mind, for products to remain sustainable and affordable over time."
Ms Lai believes insurers should help individuals make informed coverage decisions, saying, “It is not about choosing the highest level of coverage possible today, but the right level of coverage over different phases in life.
“After all, we do not want for ourselves to have to make difficult, unanticipated downgrades later in life and lose the coverage that we had been counting on.”
Ms Lai said, “Only by doing so will insurance meet its objective, which is to provide assurance into the long-term.”
She also called for employee medical benefits and IPs to “play more complementary rather than duplicative roles”, in order to help provide assurance in areas where the other does not, and in so doing, take a person-centred approach rather than a product-centred one.
2. Sustainable coverage
“Longer lives also mean that healthcare coverage must remain sustainable over a longer horizon, given medical advances and increasing healthcare utilisation,” said Ms Lai.
While she conceded that managing healthcare costs is challenging, she also pointed out that insurers and employers all have a role in “ensuring appropriate healthcare use for financing to remain sustainable, continue to strengthen national healthcare financing by funding interventions that deliver value, and evolving frameworks to better support preventive medicine and aged care”.
“Benefit design is important to ensure sustainability of financing and coverage, and thoughtful design involves decisions not only about what should be financed, but how it is financed,” said Ms Lai.
3. Preventive health
Ms Lai said, "The key to longer and healthier lives lies not in simply treating disease better, but preventing disease where we can, and detecting it earlier where we cannot."
In this, she highlighted the Singaporean government’s role in significantly stepping up investments in primary and preventive care.
She said, "From 2021 to 2024, our total operational funding for healthcare services increased about 50%. In spite of this larger base, the share of spending that went to primary care and preventive care rose from 14% to 19%."
She added, “We are also investing in precision medicine to identify individuals at higher risk and enable earlier intervention.”
She also said, “Together, these efforts seek to prevent disease where possible and enable earlier rather than later intervention, which is far more costly.”
This is where employers and insurers can reinforce efforts through supportive workplaces, such as in wellness programmes and initiatives that encourage health-seeking behaviour, Ms Lai added.
“These collectively create an environment where it is easy for individuals to make healthier choices, and encourage them to take the lead in managing their own health, and the result would be a healthier and happier society, a more productive workforce and less pressure on our insurance and healthcare systems,” she said.
“Ultimately, purposeful longevity is a collective endeavour across government and healthcare providers as well as insurers, employers and other stakeholders.”