When AIA Singapore released its longevity study on July 23, the headline – that 51% of Singaporeans view living longer as a concern rather than an opportunity – framed the findings as a consumer sentiment story. The data beneath that figure points to a different one. Only 19% of respondents have begun planning for long-term care (LTC), and just 23% expect to use private long-term care insurance if they need it. For the insurance industry, those numbers describe an adviser engagement failure as much as a consumer behaviour gap.
The AIA Longevity Study surveyed more than 1,000 consumers aged 25 and above between April and May 2026. Its findings land in a market that recorded strong headline growth: Singapore’s life insurance sector posted S$6.53 billion in total weighted new business premiums for 2025, an 11.3% increase on the prior year, according to Life Insurance Association Singapore (LIA Singapore). The AIA data raises questions about whether that growth has reached protection segments where need is sharpest.
The long-term care segment shows the widest mismatch between product availability and consumer uptake. With just 23% of respondents planning to use private LTC insurance, the majority rely on CareShield Life – Singapore’s mandatory national scheme – as their primary fallback. The enhanced monthly CareShield Life payout stands at S$689 in 2026, covering approximately 23% of the average long-term care cost reported by caregivers, with care costs rising at around 4% annually, according to Singlife. Singlife’s Long-Term Care White Paper 2025 puts the current monthly cost at S$3,000 per month, with an average claim duration of 10 years.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) accepted CareShield Life Council recommendations in late 2025 to enhance the scheme from January 2026, committing an additional S$570 million in subsidies to moderate premium increases. Those changes raise the payout growth rate from 2% to 4% annually and extend affordability support for lower-income policyholders – but they do not bridge the gap between what the scheme pays and what care costs.
Insurers have moved to address the shortfall at the product level. In March 2026, Singlife launched a Care Collab Recovery Support Benefit, available at no extra cost from April 1, 2026, to customers holding both a Singlife Health Plus plan and CareShield Life or ElderShield coverage, providing S$20,000 over two years for home nursing care and rehabilitation following severe disability. Whether such products reach the 81% of AIA study respondents who have yet to begin LTC planning is the industry’s core distribution challenge.
The distribution dimension has not escaped the regulator. At the LIA Annual Luncheon on March 27, 2025, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) assistant managing director Lim Tuang Lee said the regulator had conducted a thematic review of financial institutions’ advisory and sales processes for long-term accident and health policies and would issue an information paper setting out supervisory expectations and observed practices. That disclosure – made directly to the industry’s peak body – signals that MAS has identified adviser competency in selling long-term protection products as a material concern, not only a consumer education matter. At the same luncheon, LIA Singapore said it would work with the Singapore College of Insurance (SCI) and MoneySense to promote broader use of the Basic Financial Planning Guide and encourage consumers to seek licensed advice – the industry’s acknowledgement that the gap between awareness and coverage requires structural intervention, not just consumer communication.
The AIA study’s financial planning data maps the scale of what remains unresolved. Some 87% of respondents agreed that financial security is essential to ageing well – yet only 33% said they engage regularly in financial planning. Nearly half (45%) said they are not confident planning their finances for increased longevity, the highest unpreparedness level across any dimension in the study. Some 31% said they lack adequate healthcare coverage altogether. LIA Singapore’s Protection Gap Study 2022 – the most recent available – found a S$373 billion mortality protection gap and a S$579 billion critical illness protection gap among economically active Singaporeans, equating to a 21% mortality gap and 74% CI gap. The AIA study’s behavioural findings suggest the awareness-action gap underlying those figures has not closed materially in the years since.
The Manulife Asia Care Survey 2025, which surveyed 1,021 Singapore consumers, corroborates the pattern. It found gaps between retirement aspirations and the financial ability to fund them, with financial readiness emerging as a key unmet need. Mark Czajkowski, chief marketing officer of Manulife Singapore, pointed directly to distribution: “Even as insurers improve their product offerings, the lack of urgency to assess coverage gaps suggests that insurers can create more opportunities for conversations around health, wellness, and longevity to take place.”
The proportion of Singapore residents aged 65 and over reached 18.8% in 2025, up from 11.8% a decade earlier, according to the Singapore Department of Statistics. LIA Singapore has noted that by 2030, approximately one in four Singaporeans will be aged 65 and above. The CPF board notes that one in two Singapore citizens is expected to develop severe disability at some point in their lifetime.
The AIA study identifies a 10-year window where intervention matters most: respondents expect health to begin declining at 70.2 years while expecting to live to 80.2. That decade is where LTC, critical illness, disability income, and annuity products are most applicable. The cohort with the most runway – those aged 41 to 50 – is also the most reactive: 60% said they address health issues only when they arise, compared with 46% of those aged 51 to 65.
Irma Hadikusuma, chief marketing and healthcare officer at AIA Singapore, said the gap requires coordinated action. “This is where a broader ecosystem of support needs to come in – bringing together healthcare providers, employers, insurers, community partners, and public institutions to make earlier action easier, more accessible, and more integrated across health, wealth, work, and care,” Hadikusuma said.
