Singapore Life's (Singlife's) numerous risk management milestones achieved in 2024, including cultivating a proactive risk culture and improvements to its business and operational resiliency, make it the deserved winner of our risk team of the year.

For context, Singlife, which is headquartered in Singapore, is a leading financial services company. In March 2024, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Life Insurance, one of Japan's leading life insurers, which valued Singlife at S$4.6 bn ($3.4bn), making the transaction one of the largest insurance deals in Southeast Asia.

In terms of strengthening its risk culture this year, the composite insurer implemented an enhanced risk programme, including formal working groups and quarterly functional unit meetings to foster engagement and knowledge sharing.

Strengthening risk culture also included developing a manifesto to guide senior leaders in their roles in effective risk management.

Singlife's targeted training in data analysis, cloud computing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) impressed the judging panel too.

This year it also enhanced the integrated risk assurance framework (IAF) and strengthened its technology risk assessments to ensure risk-controlled cloud technology transformations, while maintaining robust operational resiliency.

Singlife's technology transformation is evident by the successful migration of its infrastructure to a fully cloud-based environment involving multiple cloud providers.

To improve data quality to support business decision-making, Singlife established a robust data governance and maturity framework in collaboration with its data science team and critical data owners. This included implementing standardised data quality metrics that identified some data quality issues for remediation.

The insurer also clearly explained how its risk function improved business resiliency over the past year through targeted initiatives including analysis of key risks for top-selling products and development pricing guardrails to balance profitability, capital usage and payback periods for the products.

ALM redesign

Another notable development by the risk team was its influence on redesigning the company's asset and liability management (ALM) process. Singlife explained this has helped the organisation to navigate interest rate volatility and maintain stability in its solvency surplus.

Singlife further deserves credit for successfully implementing its IAF which has provided the linkages between key risks, controls, KRIs and risk events across all risk types.

Finally, the high level of employee satisfaction at Singlife was commended. This high level of satisfaction was partly achieved by introducing development programmes and career growth opportunities.

CRO's outlook

Looking ahead to next year, the insurer's chief risk officer Ashley Tan tells InsuranceERM that in 2025, Singlife aims to improve its risk management capabilities through a multifaceted approach.

He says Singlife plans to further enhance the use of its governance, risk and compliance system by leveraging AI to enable more effective risk analysis and reporting.

The insurer's risk function will also improve its use of AI technology, such as Microsoft Copilot to enhance risk management effectiveness in other areas, says Tan.

He comments: "Building on our risk culture baseline, we aim to achieve year-on-year progression and maturity and enhance our risk management capabilities to support regional expansion. To support these initiatives, Singlife is committed to fostering a strong risk management culture by providing continuous training and development opportunities for the team."

"This includes reviewing and expanding the job scope of individuals. This will not only ensure the roles remain relevant, meaningful, and progressive, but also help us attract top talent into our risk function."

Tan has clear views on the main risks and opportunities facing Singapore's insurance market in 2025.

With an aging demographic in Singapore, he says there is an increasing demand for health, long-term care and retirement solutions. "This demographic shift, coupled with rising healthcare costs, puts pressure on insurers to develop sustainable and affordable products.

"Additionally, the protection gap remains a concern, particularly for critical illnesses coverage.  The key risk challenge is to ensure long term business resiliency via robust pricing models, experience monitoring and reinsurance."

Digital transformation is another trend Singaporean insurers must navigate, and like other insurers around the world, Tan says "the key risk challenge is to ensure the operational resilience of technology, ethical use of AI and protection of customers data".