The “150 year mindset”: modernising legacy planning with indexed savings insurance
Legacy planning has long been associated with careful preparation: drafting wills, setting up trusts, and ensuring property or family businesses are passed on smoothly. Yet, as Singapore’s life expectancy continues to climb and multi-generation families become the norm, the way HNW families think about continuity is changing. Increasingly, there is a need to plan far beyond a single lifetime.
Over the next two decades, trillions of dollars are expected to move from one generation to the next in what many call the Great Wealth Transfer.
In Singapore, this shift is significant. Family-owned businesses are maturing, first-generation wealth creators are approaching retirement, and family offices are expanding rapidly under frameworks supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Asia’s wealth story is being rewritten in real time – not in decades, but in single market cycles. Over the next few years, the region’s affluent families will face a convergence of forces: a vast intergenerational wealth transfer, a longevity revolution, and rising climate pressures that are reshaping investment and protection priorities.
For insurers, these megatrends represent both an inflection point and an invitation: to move beyond traditional notions of coverage and toward holistic continuity planning that sustains family enterprises, protects legacies, and delivers liquidity when it matters most.
Find out when the best time is to get life insurance and whether it is too late to buy insurance, with guidance tailored for high-net-worth families. If you are already wealthy, why think about insurance? It is a question frequently asked by Singapore’s high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs).
This guide reveals how life insurance and strategic diversification preserve your family's wealth across generations from market risks and volatility. For the high-net-worth (HNW) families, the question isn’t how to grow your wealth, but how to preserve and protect it across generations.
Life insurance has long been a cornerstone of financial planning, primarily recognised for its crucial role in providing financial protection to dependents in the event of the policyholder's death. This traditional view emphasises its function as a safety net, ensuring that loved ones are shielded from financial hardship and can maintain their standard of living, cover ongoing expenses, prevent repossession of assets, and manage outstanding debts like mortgages or educational costs.
While filing a life insurance payout claim is not something anyone should wish to do, it is important to understand how the process works if such a claim becomes necessary. Life insurance helps prepare and safeguard beneficiaries financially, ensuring that they have one less worry during their time of grief.
Whether you’re looking to secure your loved ones with a policy or are unsure about the claims process, the functions of life insurance will be explored, from the payout, differences between guaranteed payout and other options, as well as what to expect when filing a claim.
In the coming decade, Asia will experience the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in its history. With an estimated US$5.8 trillion set to be passed on from the first generation of wealth creators to the next by 20301, this raises profound questions about how families across the region should prepare – not only in terms of financial assets, but in the preservation of values, traditions, and opportunities for future generations.
Sun Life Singapore’s new indexed universal life products aim to help clients protect, grow and transfer their wealth with flexibility across generations.
Singapore’s status as a leading wealth hub shows no signs of slowing. The island-state continues to attract High Net Worth (HNW) and Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) individuals and families from across the region. Over the past five years, the number of UHNW individuals in Singapore grew by 158 percent to 4,200, driven by newly minted citizens and the establishment of family offices. This figure is expected to rise by another 43 percent to around 6,000 by 2026 from Citywire Asia report.
Possibly the single greatest unspoken risk in Asia’s family enterprises is the death of the principal (a matriarch or patriarch), who holds everything together – key person risk – and it can unravel decades of wealth creation in a matter of weeks.
Asia stands on the cusp of possibly the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history. Trillions of dollars will change hands as the first generation of wealth creators in the region pass on their assets to the next generations. Singapore, already established as a hub for wealth management and family offices, sits at the heart of this shift.
Particularly appealing to high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), an indexed universal life policy can provide wealth accumulation while preserving flexibility. This article explores what an IUL is, how it differs from traditional universal life (UL), and what to consider when evaluating it as part of a wealth growth and preservation strategy.
To leave a legacy is to make a lasting impact—one that endures across generations. While wills and trusts remain key pillars of traditional estate planning, life insurance has emerged as a powerful, often underappreciated, component of a well-rounded legacy strategy.
Estate planning goes far beyond drafting a will —it forms a crucial component of a comprehensive wealth management strategy. Whether it's a family business, real estate holdings, or a diverse investment portfolio, a thoughtful estate plan ensures that an individual’s life work continues to grow and protects his family's financial future for generations to come.
Women in Asia Pacific have made significant strides on the road to financial empowerment, with each new generation in greater control of their finances than the one before. However, many face financial and time pressures as they attempt to build wealth while caring for family members and balancing increasing healthcare costs with wider cost of living pressures.
Recent decades have seen an epidemic rise in diabetes cases, with more than 540 million people living with the condition worldwide, according to the International Diabetes Federation. More than 90 million of those are in Southeast Asia, and the number of adults with diabetes in the region is projected to soar to 152 million by 2045, presenting a serious public health challenge.
Philanthropic giving does more than just support those in need. By shining a spotlight on good causes, it inspires others to contribute as well. Sun Life Singapore unveiled its Life is Brighter charity fund, an initiative aimed at driving positive change.
By 2050, close to 1.3 billion people in Asia Pacific — one in four people — will be over 60 years old. This significant demographic shift, as large segments of the population reach old age and live longer, will create new challenges and opportunities for societies across the region.
Life insurance has evolved, from not only being an income protection tool to help a family through adverse situations, to one that is used strategically by HNW and UHNW individuals in wealth planning and to enhance philanthropy giving, leaving a legacy beyond the current generation.
