AIA Singapore has introduced a wide range of new measures aimed at improving the healthcare and mental healthcare services of its insurance policyholders, due to the increasing worries about the high healthcare expenditure in the country. All members insured by AIA will now also be able to use telemedicine services offered by a telehealth organization known as WhiteCoat, which is a significant improvement compared to earlier ones where such services were only available under certain packages such as AIA HealthShield Gold Max.
This will allow well over a million AIA Insurance policyholders in Singapore to make use of health care professionals through electronic correspondence, which helps to reduce the cost associated with the travel for treatment. Moreover, it also comes in handy because the residents of Singapore are experiencing high costs of healthcare, which has always been higher than the overall cost of living. Based on AIA projections, medical costs will rise once again by 10.7% in 2024, which will add more pressure to individuals and households. Recently, an opinion poll was done, and about 80% of participants from Singapore said that they were worried about whether healthcare could be affordable, indicating the importance of cost-effective options.
Irma Hadikusuma, AIA Singapore’s Chief Marketing and Proposition Officer, also pointed out that the objective of the augmented telehealth collaboration partnership is to ease some of the economic constraints of policyholders as well as help them enhance their overall wellbeing and longevity. This will not be a standalone initiative since there is a wider strategy thatAIA has aimed at bridging the widening protection gap in Singapore by ensuring more people get the healthcare they deserve.
Apart from its telemedicine expansion, AIA Singapore is also improving its corporate insurance services. Starting from 2025, AIA will also provide its Group Hospital & Surgical Insurance (GHS) medical insurance schemes with cover for inpatient treatment of mental health disorders. This addition signifies the first time such cover will be offered under corporate policies to over 1.3 million workers representing almost a third of Singapore’s population. It is understood that this change has taken place due to the employers’ and employees’ increasing recognition and request for access to mental health services at the workplace. For instance, findings reveal that as much as 59 percent of the population of Singapore thinks there should be more facilitation for mental health enhancement. These two factors, namely access and cost, have been historically viewed as impediments to mental health care, and this initiative is meant to address such matters.
AIA’s current activities, on the other hand, are aimed at ensuring that healthcare is affordable and within reach by all Singaporeans regardless of the age, income levels or the mental challenges that are on the increase in that region.
