Critical illness cover you need.
Recommended CI cover
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Income replacement portion
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Your breakdown
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Critical illness cover answers a different question to life insurance
Life insurance protects the people who depend on you if you die. Critical illness cover protects you while you are still alive but unable to work. A major diagnosis, a stroke, a cancer that needs eighteen months of treatment, rarely kills your income overnight, but it can stop you earning for years while bills pile up. This tool sizes a lump sum that replaces several years of income during recovery, adds a buffer for treatment and care that your health insurance does not fully meet, then subtracts cover and savings you already have.
MediShield Life is not the whole answer
Every Singaporean and PR has MediShield Life, and many add an Integrated Shield Plan on top, which is good and necessary. But these are hospitalisation plans. They pay for treatment, subject to deductibles, co-insurance, and ward-class limits. They do not replace the salary you stop earning, they do not cover the home help you might need, and they rarely stretch to long rehabilitation or experimental therapy. The buffer in this calculator is meant to plug that gap, the part of a serious illness that medical insurance leaves on your own balance sheet.
Sizing cover for a $100,000 earner
Take someone earning $100,000 a year who wants to cover a five-year recovery window, with a $100,000 buffer for treatment and care, and who already holds $150,000 of critical illness cover plus liquid savings. The income replacement portion is five years times $100,000, which is $500,000. Add the $100,000 buffer for $600,000 of total need, then subtract the $150,000 already in place. The recommended additional cover is $450,000.
Early stage versus late stage matters
A practical point the headline sum hides: not all critical illness payouts are equal. Many serious conditions are caught early today, and early-stage payouts are often a fraction of the full sum assured. If your cover only pays in full at late stage, the protection you think you have may not arrive when you need it most. When you act on the figure this tool produces, check whether the plan offers early and intermediate stage benefits, and whether it allows multiple claims, because a single-claim plan terminates after the first payout even if a second unrelated illness follows.
Two common questions
Is five years of income the right window?
Five years is a reasonable default because it spans a long treatment and recovery period without assuming you never work again. Adjust it to your situation. A sole breadwinner with young children and a mortgage might want more, while someone with a working spouse and no debt might pick three. The tool lets you set the window precisely so the income replacement portion reflects your real exposure rather than a generic rule.
Should the payout be a lump sum or income style?
Most critical illness cover in Singapore pays a single lump sum on diagnosis, which gives you flexibility to use it for treatment, to clear debt, or to fund time off. That suits the model here. There are also income-style and disability-income products that pay monthly if you cannot work, which can complement a lump sum. If protecting ongoing cash flow is your priority, look at income protection alongside this, since the two cover overlapping but distinct risks.
Term cover or whole-life critical illness?
A common way to fund a large sum affordably is term critical illness cover, which protects you for a set period such as up to age 65, the years when a serious illness would do the most financial damage because you still depend on your income. The premiums are far lower than a whole-life plan for the same sum assured, which lets you buy the $450,000 in the example without straining the budget. Whole-life cover lasts for life and can build a small surrender value, but you pay heavily for that permanence. My usual advice for a working adult with dependants is to secure an adequate sum on term first, then consider a smaller whole-life layer only if there is budget left over.