LIA has released its quarterly report on the life insurance industry for the second quarter of 2011. Sales for the industry is once again booming, but does that mean that Singaporeans are becoming more well insured? Participating products and investment-linked products made up 77% of policies sold. This easily explains why people perceive insurance to cost more than the actual price. Most policies are sold with large portions of the premium going towards wealth accumulation that incidentally does not perform well because of the large upfront charges involved with insurance policies. The lion’s share of the remaining 23% going to non-participating products are probably riders to sweeten the deal to sell expensive policies. The report also attributes a major factor behind the industry’s growth to the sales of mainly savings-oriented products by banks:

“The first half year’s performance was buoyed by growth in bancassurance, mostly from sales of savings-oriented products. ...

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