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Overview of Insurance and Risk Financing

Today, Singapore is well-recognised as the leading reinsurance and specialty insurance centre in Asia. We continue to deepen underwriting and research capabilities in large and complex risks, and aim to become a global capital for Asian risk transfer by 2025, offering a wide spectrum of risk financing solutions that goes beyond traditional insurance and reinsurance, to risk pools and alternative risk transfer mechanisms such as insurance linked securities and supported by forward looking cutting edge technology and highly skilled future ready professionals.

What MAS Offers

As a global capital for Asian risk transfer, Singapore offers a wide spectrum of risk financing solutions including:

Captives

  • Singapore is home to many large multi-national corporations and global Fortune 500 companies.
  • Such large enterprises set up captive insurance companies to insure against business risks, as a strategic option in their group risk management. As of 15 January 2021, Singapore is home to 79 captive insurers.

Insurance and Reinsurance

  • Transfers risks to the traditional insurance and reinsurance markets.
  • Specialised lines such as credit insurance, aviation, energy, terrorism & political risk, professional indemnity, and marine hull & liability, cyber, and natural catastrophe risks.

Risk Pooling

  • Sovereign risk pools to provide immediate financing in the aftermath of a natural disaster e.g. Southeast Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility (SEADRIF).
  • Commercial risk pools for e.g. Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) Insurance Consortium to provide capacity for specialised risks.

Alternative Risk Transfer Mechanism

  • Transfers risk to the capital markets through insurance-linked securitisation, for example catastrophe bonds.
  • Catastrophe bonds provide multi-year capacity and pricing certainty, are more secure due to their fully collateralised nature and ability to be rated, are a good alternative to traditional reinsurance for risks that are hard to model and they are capital-efficient.

Regulations and Guidelines

Entities wishing to conduct insurance and insurance broking activities are licensed and governed under the Insurance Act. Find out about the different types of insurance entities and their licensing requirements.

Entities and their representatives who wish to conduct financial advisory activities need to be licensed under the Financial Advisory Act. Find out more about the licensing requirements for these entities.

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Contact Us

Write to us at webmaster@mas.gov.sg for more information.

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