Compare the Best Term Insurance Plans in Singapore (2026)

What Term Life Insurance Is, and What It’s Really For

Term life insurance is a policy that pays out a lump sum if you die or are diagnosed with a terminal illness during a fixed period you choose, and, with riders added, if you suffer a total and permanent disability or a critical illness. When that period ends, the cover stops and there is no cash value.

What you get for that simplicity is a large amount of cover for a small premium.

The real purpose is income protection. Your income is what pays the mortgage, raises your children, and builds your retirement. A term plan replaces a portion of it if you are no longer around, or no longer able, to earn.

That is why it fits the years when other people depend on you: while the home loan runs, and while the children are not yet standing on their own. It works best as one layer within your broader insurance planning, not as a fix on its own.

How Much Cover Do You Actually Need?

Singapore’s official Basic Financial Planning Guide, published by MoneySense with MAS and the industry bodies, recommends holding life cover of about 9 times your annual income for death and total permanent disability, and about 4 times for critical illness. The Life Insurance Association’s Protection Gap Study arrives at the same 9x and 4x figures.

That is a rule of thumb, and a fine place to start. To make it your own, work out what your dependants would actually need, then count what you already have in place, in three steps:

• Add up what your dependants would need: the outstanding mortgage, day-to-day living costs for the years they would rely on you, your children’s education, and final expenses.
• Total what is already in place: existing policies, employer cover, your CPF Dependants’ Protection Scheme, CPF savings, and other assets.
• Subtract the second from the first. What is left is your protection gap, and the least you should think about covering. A life insurance calculator does the same maths with your own figures.

Take someone aged 35 earning $72,000 a year. The benchmark works out to about $648,000 of death and TPD cover and $288,000 for critical illness. If existing policies, employer cover, and savings already come to $500,000, the shortfall left to insure is nearly $150,000, and usually wider on the critical illness side.

One caveat on that subtraction. Counting your savings and CPF towards the target assumes your family would actually spend them if the worst happened.

In reality, most people would rather leave those savings where they are and have insurance carry the full amount, which is a fair argument for covering closer to the 9x and 4x levels rather than only the gap. Neither approach is wrong. It comes down to how comfortable you are running down savings instead of leaning on cover.

You Probably Already Have Some Cover, So Why Isn’t It Enough?

Most working Singaporeans already hold some life cover and are still short. The average working adult is around $170,000 short on death cover and about $265,000 short on critical illness cover, going by the LIA’s 2022 study (figures as at end-2021).

Being underinsured is the normal state of affairs in Singapore, not the exception. Part of the reason is that the cover people count on is easy to overestimate.

CPF Dependants’ Protection Scheme (DPS). DPS pays out at most $70,000, and only until age 65. It is a safety net, not a plan.

Employer or group cover. Company insurance is a real benefit, but it usually lapses the day you leave the job. If your health has changed by then, arranging your own cover afterwards can mean higher premiums or exclusions.

An old whole life policy. A plan bought years ago often carries a modest sum assured. It is worth checking what it actually covers before assuming you are set.

None of these layers are useless. The point is that they add up to less than most people think, which is where a term plan does the heavy lifting.

What a Term Plan Covers

Every term plan covers death, and terminal illness is almost always bundled in with it. Everything beyond that is added through riders, so you can shape the plan around what you need.

The common building blocks are:

• Total and permanent disability (TPD). Pays out if you are totally and permanently disabled.
• Critical illness (CI). Pays on diagnosis of one of the 37 standardised critical illnesses, most of which are later-stage conditions.
• Early critical illness (ECI). Extends that cover to early and intermediate stages, where standard CI cover may not pay at all, so some consider a standalone early critical illness plan.

Critical illness is where the shortfall bites hardest. It strikes more often than most people expect, yet our claims research points to an average critical illness payout of around $52,000 at one insurer, which can fall well short of the years of income a serious diagnosis costs.

One thing to plan around: cover is priced on your health, and every application is subject to underwriting and full health disclosure. The longer you wait, the more medical history you carry into the application.

Choosing Your Term Plan: The Decisions That Matter

A handful of settings decide almost everything about what you pay and what you get back. Work through these before you start comparing quotes.

How long to cover. Match the term to your working years. Cover to around your retirement age, or retirement age plus five, is usually enough. With life expectancy in Singapore now around 84, some prefer to cover for longer at a higher premium, and a few use plans that run to age 99 for a different, legacy purpose.

How much to cover. Use the protection gap from the section above, rather than a round number that simply feels comfortable.

Which riders. TPD, CI, and ECI each add to the premium. Add the ones that match a real risk to your income, and leave the rest off.

Level or decreasing. A level term plan keeps the same cover throughout. A mortgage-reducing plan falls over time to track a home loan, the same principle behind dedicated mortgage insurance and the Home Protection Scheme, which can suit that one liability but leaves nothing spare for the rest. That said, level term plans these days often come at competitive rates and with broader benefits, which is why many people now prefer them even when a home loan is the main concern.

Premium and renewal type. A fixed level term locks your premium for the whole term. Renewable short terms cost less at the start but rise at each renewal, so they suit short-term needs.

Term or Whole Life?

In short, term insurance buys the most cover for the lowest premium, over a set number of years. Whole life covers you for life and builds a cash value, but it costs far more for the same sum assured.

For most people with dependants and a mortgage, the priority is a large enough sum assured during the years it matters, and that is what term does well. Whole life has its place for lifelong needs, such as leaving something behind whenever you pass.

In my opinion, it is worth covering yourself properly with term first, then looking at whole life for anything left over. The differences between term and whole life run deeper than price, and whole life plans differ in how they balance cover against cash value.

With the groundwork done, here is how the leading term insurance plans in Singapore compare.