Sales of all but 2 IP riders now will cease come April 2026
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IPs cover stays in higher-class wards in restructured hospitals, as well as in private hospitals, including this room at Raffles Hospital.
PHOTO: RAFFLES HOSPITAL
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SINGAPORE – Almost all current Integrated Shield Plan (IP) rider plans will not be sold come April 2026, when the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) new requirements
Only two plans out of 28 available now can continue to be sold to new policyholders from April 1.
MOH announced in November that new IP riders sold from April 2026 will no longer be allowed to cover the minimum deductibles set by MOH, meaning patients with the new riders have to pay at least $1,500 before insurance coverage kicks in.
The co-payment cap will also be doubled from the current $3,000 to $6,000, which means those on the new riders will need to pay a larger portion of their bills.
This is to address rising insurance premiums and private healthcare costs and, in turn, slow down the migration of private healthcare patients to the public sector, which already caters to 90 per cent of patients.
As a result of MOH’s latest requirements, new riders are expected to cost a lot less – premiums will be about 30 per cent lower than those of existing riders with maximum coverage.
But current riders whose premiums are set at a relatively low level and so could even be cheaper than the new riders that replace them will still be on the way out.
In response to queries from The Straits Times, MOH said: “All existing riders that do not meet these (new) requirements, even if they have lower premiums and higher co-payment requirements than the most generous riders today, will not be available to new policyholders from April 1, 2026.”
For the estimated two million Singapore residents who had bought riders before Nov 26, when MOH announced the new requirements, they are currently not affected by MOH’s requirements.
Insurance companies in the Singapore market will study whether to adjust the coverage of the existing riders.
All seven IP insurers now offer riders that provide additional coverage on top of the IP coverage.
Six insurers have confirmed that their entire suite of riders – totalling 25 different plans – do not meet MOH’s requirements, and said they would launch new riders that make the cut for new buyers by April 2026. These insurers are AIA, Great Eastern (GE), HSBC Life, Income Insurance, Prudential and Singlife.
Raffles Health Insurance has three rider products – its Key Rider will be bowing out, but its Premier Rider and Cancer Guard Rider are not impacted.
Most of the riders to be phased out offer coverage for the minimum IP deductibles, hence they do not meet MOH’s new requirements.
The minimum IP deductibles as at November is at least $1,500 for subsidised patients staying in Class C wards, or day surgery and short-stay wards.
There are rider plans, such as GE’s two TotalCare Basic plans and Singlife’s two Health Plus Lite plans, that do not cover the deductibles. But as they do not meet the revised minimum co-payment cap of $6,000, they also have to be removed.
Among the 26 plans to cease sales, some have premiums priced much lower than riders which provide maximum coverage. But they will still be phased out because they either cover the deductibles or cap co-payment at $3,000.
For instance, the average premiums for Income’s Classic Care Rider, which imposes a 10 per cent co-payment, are about 40 per cent lower than its Deluxe Care Rider, which imposes a 5 per cent co-payment.
When asked about having to drop a cheaper rider and launch new ones which will cost more, Income chief customer officer Dhiren Amin said that Income agrees with MOH’s objectives to support long-term sustainability of private healthcare insurance, and promote responsible usage of healthcare services.
“The revised requirements introduced by MOH are not solely about whether an existing rider has lower premiums or higher co-payment requirements. Rather, they require IP riders coming onto the market from April 1, 2026, to be designed differently in order to support these objectives,” said Mr Amin.
For Singlife, the current standard premium of its Health Plus Private Prime rider for a 60-year-old policyholder is $4,402.50, whereas the premium for a Health Plus Public Lite policyholder of the same age can go as low as $326.25, which is around 92 per cent cheaper.
Ms Helen Shen, group head of products for Singlife, said that the company offers IPs and riders for policyholders with different needs, budgets and at different life stages.
“The products being phased out were designed under a previous framework, and with the new guidelines, it is important to align our riders to meet these standards,” said Ms Shen.
Mr Eddy Cheong, chief executive officer of insurance advisory firm Havend, said it remains to be seen if insurers will eventually decide to move all existing policyholders to new riders.
Some insurers may want to allow existing policyholders who wanted coverage of the deductible riders to continue holding these policies.
However, this has to be balanced with achieving or maintaining a minimum number of policyholders to support the risk-pooling, which means collecting enough premiums from all policyholders to ensure adequate resources are available to pay off the medical bills incurred by those who need care, said Mr Cheong.
Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on Dec 14 that around 100,000 people in Singapore drop or downgrade their insurance riders every year
This would have a direct impact on the risk-pooling size. For those who choose to hold on to existing riders, such as those who expect to make claims in the near future, Mr Cheong predicts that their premiums will continue to escalate, even at a much faster rate as the risk pool gets smaller.
This will “further exacerbate the situation, prompting insurers to ultimately move people to the new riders” or eventually discontinue the existing riders.
Dr Jeremy Lim, a public health specialist, said that going forward, consolidation of products will be expected as Singapore is not a big market for insurance by customer numbers.
“With more policy pressures towards down-managing costs, it is inevitable that there will be fewer rider products, and insurers will actively encourage policyholders to migrate to a narrower set,” said Dr Lim.
Mr Ong earlier said it is hoped that the introduction of the new requirements will persuade people to “downgrade their rider to something more affordable with 30 per cent reduction in premiums, and maybe they can hold on to it and stay with private healthcare”.
