Money Talks Podcast: What kind of non-medical insurance do you really need?

Is it possible to insure yourself against climate change? Is personal cyber insurance a must, given that we have digital lives?

In this week’s episode of Money Talks, Helen Shen, Singlife’s group head of health, tells us what you need to know about supplementary insurance policies.

Jump to these key moments: 

• 00:33 Singapore tourism dip; BYD in Brazil
• 04:18 New types of insurance
• 11:12 When should we get caregiver insurance? 
• 18:16 Protecting your pets 

Here's an excerpt from the podcast: 

Andrea Heng: 

So we know the usual suspects right. There's health insurance, medical, travel, all the necessary stuff, so to speak, right? But now we're hearing about things like pet insurance, cyber insurance, and even climate change related plans. So first of all, help me understand. Why have so many new types of insurance emerged recently? 

Helen Shen: 

That's a really great question to get started with. I think it's two things. One, we're seeing hyper customisation. Consumers want that. You don't only want that for insurance, but you want that for your clothes. You want that for every little thing that you touch. And how can financial services and insurance not catch up? So we're seeing a lot of trends where folks are like, I don't want something that is the same across for everyone. I'm unique. Make sure that my insurance work with me as well. That's one. The second piece is we are also seeing the boom of technology. Technology allows us to build some of these products a lot faster than we were able to ... 20 years ago. Technology also allows us to get a lot more data on the customers that we have. And we are able to use this data because insurance at the core, is really about data. It's about probability, it's about catastrophic event, and we're using this data very smartly to give our customer that kind of customisation to what they need.