SPEECH BY MS LAI WEI LIN, PERMANENT SECRETARY (POLICY & DEVELOPMENT), MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE AIA HEALTHCARE SUMMIT 2026, 12 AUGUST 2026

Mr Tan Hak Leh, Regional Chief Executive, AIA Group

Ms Wong Sze Keed, Chief Executive Officer of AIA Singapore

Distinguished guests and partners

Ladies and gentlemen

1.       Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for being here. It was a very good introduction by Sze Keed on this theme of purposeful longevity and unpacking what it really means. I hope that your time here at this conference will be a very valuable experience, full of interesting insights and takeaways that you can put into action in your lives after this.

2.       I am pleased to join you at the inaugural AIA Healthcare Summit, on these themes of purposeful longevity, advancing holistic health, and public-private partnerships.

What Does Purposeful Longevity Look Like

3.       This is a very timely conference for Singapore. As you all know, Singaporeans are living longer and longer. Fifteen to 20 years ago, when we spoke about the silver tsunami, at that time it was about the number and proportion of Singaporeans aged 65 and above. Now, the sharp change that we see is the rise in the number and proportion of Singaporeans aged 80 years and above. All this is a result of our economic development, and investments in public health and healthcare.

4.       Many of us have pondered – what do we want our longer lives to look like?

5.       The answers are usually clear – I think all of us often say we want the additional years to have purpose, to be spent with the people who mean a lot to us, and to be lived in good health, and with us being able to maintain our independence as much as possible.

6.       We see more Singaporeans continuing to work for more years, including in a part-time capacity, or in a new capacity altogether such as in career coaching, so as to stay meaningfully engaged.

Redesigning Services to Support Rising Longevity

7.       At the Ministry of Health (MOH), we have been enhancing the ecosystem of support for seniors. Through Active Ageing Centres and senior volunteerism efforts, we hope to help them stay fit and healthy and combat social isolation, while contributing to the community.

8.       We have been strengthening aged care, especially as family sizes and support wane. To support ageing in place, we have enhanced community care support for seniors, such as through the enhanced Home Personal Care as well as the Shared Stay-in Senior Caregiving Services. We have also been looking at caregiver support, to reduce families’ caregiving stress and enable them to enjoy more quality time with their loved ones. On the financing side, we have also been improving coverage, so that our seniors and their families have greater assurance as they age.

9.         We cannot do this alone, and this is where the public-private partnerships come in. We benefit from strong partnerships with healthcare providers – across public, private and charity sectors; and insurers, including yourselves. It is a whole-of-society approach, supporting Singaporeans, to achieve our vision of purposeful longevity. 

10.         Just as rising longevity led us to redesign our healthcare and aged care system, rising longevity also begets the question of how we need to redesign coverage and ensure assurance for Singaporeans, from our working years to our retirement. 

The Story of Pharmacy Practice

11.       Let me first spend some time sharing an analogy of pharmacists. I think all of you know that over the decades, you see healthcare professions transforming in the way that they provide care – and among them, the pharmacists are no different.

12.       There was a time when a pharmacist's main responsibility was to ensure the safe dispensing and uninterrupted supply of medicines. I am sure you all remember some picture of pharmacists counting pills at the front line in the pharmacy, giving advice, making sure you understand instructions. Indeed, their job was to make sure that the patient understood how to take the medication and had sufficient supply of it. Pharmacists were trained to know their medicines really well and they worked mainly in the confines of the pharmacy.

13.       Today, their patient care and drug supply work has evolved with automation and with digitalisation.       

14.       While ensuring robustness of medication use and supply is still part of their work, they now focus a lot of their expertise more upstream on patient care, on the patient. This is especially as older patients often have multiple chronic diseases and complex co-morbidities, and they take a long list of medications.

15.       In terms of pharmacists’ roles in the healthcare system, we now see them being part of multi-disciplinary ward rounds in the hospitals and proactively influencing medication decisions upstream. They also conduct medication reviews, checking for drug interactions and optimising medication use. Thus, averting potential drug-related problems and improving care outcomes for patients.

16.       We also see advanced practice and specialist pharmacists undertake even more extended scope of practice, through pharmacist-led clinics in areas such as heart failure, chronic kidney disease, and complex geriatric care.

17.       Pharmacists’ roles also extend into the community: advising on medication use and minor ailment management, and supporting preventive health, for example, in smoking cessation and now also delivering influenza vaccinations under a sandbox.

18.       Pharmacists have anchored themselves in patient care, broader and deeper, taking a holistic and longitudinal perspective of the individual, shifting focus from the medication to the person, thereby increasing the value that they bring.

A Longevity Perspective to Coverage and Assurance

19.      Turning to our topic today, this evolution of pharmacists’ roles reflects the broader transformation of healthcare, one that takes a holistic view of the individual’s needs, which also means taking a life-course approach, a longevity approach – not just managing the disease, but also supporting wellness, preventing or delaying illness, and empowering individuals to take ownership of their health and maintain their independence.

20.        A holistic, life-course approach should shape not only how we deliver healthcare, but also how we finance it and how we design insurance coverage.

21.      As Singaporeans live longer, we should see how insurance can walk the health and life journey with all of us. The insurance business has always been about the long-term, with decisions grounded in projecting health risks, medical inflation, and ensuring sustainability, over time. Insurers enter markets with the long haul in mind. You are already well-placed to think for individuals long-term, focusing on delivering better outcomes for them, and in turn for the society and for the healthcare system.

22.      This philosophy of walking the health and life journey with the individual, calls for closer public-private partnerships in three areas of shared responsibilities: assurance over the life course, keeping coverage sustainable, and investing in preventive health.

Shared Responsibility 1 – Assurance for Individuals Across the Life Course

23.      Let me start with the first area.

24.      We should place individuals at the centre, and design our products and options in a way that aligns with their needs over their life course.

25.        Today, many working Singaporeans rely on a combination of employee medical benefits, or what we call EMBs, and their personal Integrated Shield Plans, or IPs. EMBs and IPs are significant pillars of health financing. Together, they account for about 15% of Singapore's Current Health Expenditure (CHE). As a comparison, Government spending is about 50%. Of this 15% share, IP payouts account for 5%; EMB accounts for the rest, 5% in the form of group health insurance, and 5% in the form of direct reimbursement from employers.

26.      As individuals retire and EMBs cease, IPs become their main source of healthcare protection in their old age. It is therefore important for IPs to be designed and chosen, with the long-term in mind, for products to remain sustainable and affordable over time. We should help individuals make informed coverage decisions – it is not about choosing the highest level of coverage possible today, but the right level of coverage over different phases in life. After all, we do not want for ourselves to have to make difficult unanticipated downgrades later in life and lose the coverage that we had been counting on, just when our healthcare needs are growing. Only by doing so would insurance meet its objective, which is to provide assurance into the long-term.  

27.      On this, we are very glad that our IP insurers, including AIA, have been working with MOH to help policyholders better understand their coverage, and right-size it as they age.

28.      As for EMBs, its share in healthcare financing coverage is significant, like IPs. There is scope to consider how EMBs and IPs can play more complementary, rather than duplicative, roles, and help to provide assurance in areas where the other does not, and in so doing, take a person-centred approach, not a product-centred one.

Shared Responsibility 2: Keeping Healthcare Financing Sustainable

29.        Second, let me move on to sustainable coverage.

30.        Longer lives also mean that healthcare coverage must remain sustainable over a longer horizon. Given medical advances and increasing healthcare utilisation, managing healthcare costs is of course challenging. Government, insurers and employers all have a role in ensuring appropriate healthcare use and for financing to remain sustainable.

31.      MOH will continue to strengthen our national healthcare financing by funding interventions that deliver value as well as evolving our frameworks to better support preventive medicine and aged care.

32.      Benefit design is important to ensure sustainability of financing coverage.  Thoughtful design involves decisions not only about what should be financed, but how it is financed.

33.      In this regard, MOH works closely with the IP insurers on this, to focus coverage on clinically and cost-effective interventions and treatments and also to retain some co-payment as a design feature, in IPs and riders. This is because it encourages individuals to make more informed healthcare decisions and supports prudent healthcare use.

34.      As for EMBs, employers keep the co-payment minimal. This is understandable, so as not to send the wrong signal that they do not care for their employees. However, they are also concerned about the rising cost of EMB coverage.

35.      This is an area worth thinking about – how EMBs can be designed to encourage appropriate care and be affordable for both employees and employers. This is not about reducing support, but about stretching every dollar of coverage that employers have to spend.

Shared Responsibility 3: Investing in Preventive Health

36.      The third area is about preventive health, and also an area where employers can play a role.

37.      The key to longer and healthier lives lies not in simply treating disease better, but preventing disease where we can, and detecting it earlier where we cannot.

38.        The Government has significantly stepped up our investment in primary and preventive care. From 2021 to 2024, our total operational funding for healthcare services increased about 50%. In spite of this larger base, the share of spending that went to primary care and preventive care rose, from 14% to 19%, driven largely by Healthier SG.

39.      We are also investing in precision medicine to identify individuals at higher risk and enable earlier intervention.

40.      Together, these efforts seek to prevent disease where possible and enable earlier rather than later intervention, which is far more costly.

41.      This is where employers and insurers can reinforce your efforts through supportive workplaces, wellness programmes, and initiatives that encourage health-seeking behaviour, such as AIA Vitality.

42.      These collectively create an environment where it is easy for individuals to make healthier choices, and encourages them to take the lead in managing their own health.

43.      The result would be a healthier and happier society, a more productive workforce, and less pressure on our insurance and healthcare systems.

Closing

44.      Ultimately, purposeful longevity is a collective endeavour, across Government and healthcare providers, as well as insurers, employers and other stakeholders.

45.        I was really glad to hear Sze Keed speak about seeing AIA play multiple roles, not just as a payer but as a partner, and with a very person-centred lens. This is indeed about the broadening and the deepening of the perspective that we have to take as we rise up to the challenge and to the opportunities of productive longevity. We welcome all partners, partners like yourselves, to be part of this shared commitment to place individuals at the centre, supporting their needs holistically and with longevity, and to improve health outcomes while keeping costs sustainable.

46.        In so doing, like our pharmacists, you and your work become more important. You deliver even greater value in supporting your clients, over the course of their lives and care journey.

47.        Today’s Summit is an excellent platform for different stakeholders to discuss these issues, and find practical ways to work together towards these shared goals, to add life to years, and not just add years to life.

48.        I wish you all a productive and fruitful summit. Thank you.