With the exchanges on the ST Forum after SM Goh Chok Tong’s speech at the NTUC Income 40^th anniversary promoting term insurance, it would be timely to review the various types of insurance available.

Broadly for death, total and permanent disability (TPD) and critical illness (CI), there are:

Term insurance is generally pure insurance where one pays for the protection coverage, if the insured events do not occur, the premiums are non refundable. The other 3 are mainly a hybrid of term insurance with a saving/investment portion. The savings/investments portion is inflexible and subjected to various terms and conditions if one wish to withdraw from it. The premiums are higher, tenor longer and ultimately this translates to more commission to the sales staff and therefore, less beneficial to the payer.

There are also important kinds of insurance that are term, namely,