Direct Term Life Insurance Singapore 2026: The Complete DPI Guide

How to buy up to S$400,000 of term life cover directly from an insurer — no adviser, no commission

Direct Purchase Insurance (DPI) is a MAS-standardised term or whole life insurance product that Singapore insurers sell directly to you, with no financial adviser and no commission. You can buy up to S$400,000 of Term DPI cover per insurer, with an optional critical illness rider, entirely online. Five insurers currently sell it: Income, FWD, Great Eastern, AIA and China Life.

Not financial advice. All figures are sourced directly from MoneySense, the Life Insurance Association (LIA) and individual insurers’ official DPI fact sheets. Data verified as at 4 August 2026 unless otherwise noted.

Table of Contents

What Is Direct Purchase Insurance (DPI)?

Direct Purchase Insurance (DPI) is a class of standardised term and whole life insurance products that you can buy straight from a life insurer’s website or customer service centre — no financial adviser, no commission. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched DPI on 7 April 2015 alongside the compareFIRST comparison portal, as part of the Financial Advisory Industry Review (FAIR).

Because DPI is sold without advice, insurers don’t pay a distribution commission on it, and that saving is passed on to you as a lower premium. Every DPI product carries the word “DIRECT” in its name — for example, “DIRECT Star Term” or “DIRECT – GREAT Term” — so you can spot one immediately.

There are two types of DPI: Term DPI (pure protection, no cash value, cheaper) and Whole Life DPI (lifelong cover with a cash value component, more expensive). Both include Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) cover as standard, with an optional Critical Illness (CI) rider you can add on.

DPI vs a Regular Adviser-Sold Term Life Plan

The products themselves aren’t fundamentally different — a DPI term plan and a standard term life insurance plan both pay out on death, terminal illness or TPD. What changes is how it’s sold, how much you can buy, and what support you get.

Source: MoneySense “Buying Direct Purchase Insurance” (updated 1 Jul 2026); AIA and Income DPI fact sheets, 2026.

How Much DPI Coverage Can You Buy?

DPI’s biggest trade-off for going without advice is a hard coverage cap. MAS caps Term DPI at S$400,000 and Whole Life DPI at S$200,000 per insurer — and if you mix both types from the same insurer, they share the same S$400,000 combined ceiling.

Source: MoneySense “Buying Direct Purchase Insurance” (updated 1 Jul 2026).

Worked example: if you’ve already bought a S$300,000 Term DPI plan from one insurer, you can still buy either another S$100,000 Term DPI or a S$100,000 Whole Life DPI from that same insurer — but nothing more, because you’d hit the combined S$400,000 ceiling. Need more than S$400,000 of cover with a single insurer? You’ll need an adviser-sold plan instead, or spread DPI purchases across more than one insurer.

Term DPI Coverage Periods: 5-Year, 20-Year, or to Age 65

You get three coverage-period choices for Term DPI:

• 5-year renewable — shortest commitment, automatically renews (usually up to your late 70s or age 80, subject to the insurer), with premiums recalculated at each renewal based on your age.
• 20-year — fixed, non-renewable term.
• Up to age 65 — fixed, non-renewable term that runs until you turn 65.

Here’s the detail most people miss: no matter which of the three you pick, your TPD and optional CI rider benefits always stop at age 65. But if you chose the “up to age 65” option specifically, your death and terminal illness benefit actually keeps running to age 85 — well past the policy’s headline end date. That’s a genuinely useful quirk of the “up to age 65” variant that’s easy to miss if you only read the plan name.

For Whole Life DPI, cover runs until death (or a specified maturity age, such as 99), though the TPD benefit still cuts off at 65 either way. You choose to pay premiums up to age 70 (higher yearly premium, lower lifetime total) or age 85 (lower yearly premium, higher lifetime total).

Which Insurers Sell DPI in Singapore (2026)?

Five life insurers currently sell DPI in Singapore. All five cap Term DPI at S$400,000, but their coverage-period options and entry-age limits differ slightly — always check the specific product page before applying.

Source: LIA list of DPI insurers (updated 23 Jan 2026); individual insurer product pages, checked 4 Aug 2026.

For a full list of every DPI provider and their contact details, the Life Insurance Association (LIA) maintains an official register.

Should You Add the Optional Critical Illness Rider?

Every DPI term or whole life plan lets you attach an optional CI rider. Both AIA’s and Income’s official DPI fact sheets confirm the rider covers exactly 30 critical illnesses — fewer than the 37-condition list used in most standard adviser-sold plans built around the LIA framework.

The payout structure is standardised: you get 100% of your sum assured for a covered CI diagnosis, except for angioplasty and other invasive coronary treatments, where the payout is capped at 10% of the sum assured or S$25,000, whichever is lower. Once a full CI payout is made, both the CI rider and the underlying DPI policy end.

The 30 conditions cover the big-ticket illnesses — major cancer, heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, major organ transplant and so on — so for most people the gap versus a 37-condition plan is a real but secondary consideration. If specific early-stage or lesser-known conditions matter to you, that’s a case for seeing an adviser instead, since DPI riders aren’t customisable.

How Much Do You Actually Save With DPI?

The honest answer: it varies, and you should verify it yourself rather than assume a fixed discount. FWD markets its DIRECT term plan as costing “less than S$1 per day” for up to S$400,000 of cover for a young non-smoker — a genuinely low headline figure. But how much you personally save by skipping advice depends on the insurer, your age, sum assured and the specific adviser-sold plan you’re comparing against.

What’s certain, because it’s the entire regulatory point of DPI: no commission is baked into your premium, because no adviser is being paid to sell it to you. That’s a structural saving, not a promotional one. The best way to see your real number is to run the same profile (age, gender, smoker status, sum assured) through both a DPI quote and an adviser-sold quote on compareFIRST, MAS and LIA’s official comparison portal, before committing.

If premium cost is your main concern, it’s also worth checking our guide to other ways to cut your term life insurance premium — DPI is one lever, but not the only one.

Who Should Buy DPI — and Who Shouldn’t

DPI likely suits you if:

• You already know roughly how much term life insurance you need and it’s S$400,000 or less.
• You’re comfortable reading a DPI Fact Sheet, product summary and policy contract on your own, without guided explanation.
• Your needs are simple — pure death/TPD/terminal illness protection, with or without the standard CI rider.
• You want the lowest possible premium for a given sum assured and are willing to do the comparison legwork yourself.

You should see a financial adviser instead if:

• You need more than S$400,000 of cover from a single insurer.
• You’re unsure how much coverage you actually need, or which product type fits your situation.
• You want a policy that can be customised beyond the standardised DPI feature set (e.g. specific riders, decreasing sum assured tied to a mortgage, or a CI plan covering more than 30 conditions).
• You’d value someone reviewing your full financial picture, including CPF, existing policies and dependants, before you commit to a 20-year premium obligation.

How to Buy DPI in Singapore: Step-by-Step

1. Confirm your coverage need. Work out how much protection you actually need before shopping — DPI won’t do this for you.
2. Shortlist 3–4 DPI products from the five insurers above.
3. Compare them on compareFIRST.sg — premiums, features, cash values (for Whole Life DPI) and distribution cost are all shown side by side.
4. Read the DPI Fact Sheet and complete the checklist the insurer provides. This is a mandatory MAS requirement precisely because no adviser is walking you through it.
5. Apply directly via the insurer’s website or a service/branch counter — DPI cannot be bought through any other distribution channel.
6. Disclose everything truthfully in your application, including pre-existing conditions and smoker status; under-disclosure risks your claim being rejected later.

Your application still goes through underwriting even though no adviser is involved, so approval and final terms are not guaranteed until the insurer confirms them.

DPI vs DPS: Don’t Mix These Up

DPI (Direct Purchase Insurance) and DPS (Dependants’ Protection Scheme) share three letters and both involve buying term life-style protection without much fuss — but they’re completely different schemes.

Most people’s DPS cover alone falls well short of their real protection need. If you haven’t already, read our full breakdown of the Dependants’ Protection Scheme (DPS) to see exactly how much it covers you for, and whether DPI, an adviser-sold plan, or both should sit on top of it.

Where DPI Fits Into Your Wider Protection Plan

DPI is a tool, not a full financial plan. Before you apply, it’s worth confirming your total coverage need across every policy you hold — DPS, any existing term or whole life plans, and employer group insurance — not just what one DPI policy alone can provide.

Run your numbers through the Life Insurance Needs Calculator to get a DIME-method estimate of how much cover you need, then check the Insurance Gap Calculator to see exactly how much of that gap your existing policies (including DPS) already fill. If DPI’s S$400,000 cap leaves you short, that’s your signal to top up with an adviser-sold plan rather than stack multiple DPI policies across insurers.

Frequently Asked Questions