Heard someone say that the Dependants’ Protection Scheme acts as the baseline for your insurance needs. Why is this the baseline? Shouldn't health insurance be the baseline instead?

There are different layers of baseline that we need to look at. For instance, healthcare insurance is responsible to take care of your hospital bills. As a result, it ignores the fact that you still need to put food on the table. With this in mind, a term insurance policy like Dependants' Protection Scheme works to that end. You may wish to read more about how it works here: https://www.blog.pzl.sg/dependants-protection-i...

Regardless of whether you are couple with or without kids, Dependants' Protection Scheme gives your family up to S$46,000 in the event of your death, or total permanent disability. For this purpose, its importance will depend on your partner's or kids' answer - will they be able to live life slightly better and not struggle as much with this additional S$46,000 payout?

I share quality content on estate planning and financial planning here.

Hi there,

It depends on what you mean by baseline. The objective of health insurance is different from insurance like DPS. Health insurance is one of the most fundamental insurance everyone should have but if we are talking about coverage sum assured benefits, DPS will be one of the first things people should potentially have. It's a baseline partially because it offers a relatively decent coverage for the premiums you're paying. Also, the premiums can be paid using CPF. So in terms of coverage sum assured benefits, it will be one of the first line of defence.

The basic coverage of DPS covers for death, TPD and TI. So these are relatively important for people with dependents, whether it's for a partner or children if you'll like to leave a love gift for them. This is especially important also if you have running liabilities And in the unfortunate event of death, your partner need not tank the whole liability by him/herself.

Financial planning is an integral part of life. You can reach me here to find out more.