Business headlines are often dominated by technology, e-commerce and other trending sectors of the day. But away from the limelight, insurance – traditionally seen as stable and predictable – has quietly undergone its own radical transformation, as digitisation erases traditional industry boundaries.
Insurers no longer compete solely on products but on their ability to integrate prevention, assistance and hyper-personalised services. The key is creating “ecosystems”— interconnected networks of services that fulfill diverse consumer needs. Ecosystems are estimated to drive 30 percent, or US$60 trillion, of global revenues this year, reshaping industries from healthcare to mobility.
Among the insurance players at the forefront of this shift is Income Insurance, a leading composite insurer in Singapore. As we outline in a newly-published case, more than 50 years after it was established, Income Insurance is using two intertwined strategies to stay on top of its game: identifying underserved markets and building collaborative ecosystems.
Sniffing out underserved markets
Income Insurance’s growth story began in 2017 with a counter-intuitive insight: the most promising opportunities often lie in markets others ignore. While competitors prioritised standardised products for mass audiences, Income focused on three overlooked groups.
The most prominent are gig workers in Southeast Asia. Millions of drivers, delivery personnel and domestic helpers lack protection because they can’t afford traditional insurance coverage’s rigid premiums and policies with their irregular incomes. Ditto low-income populations in markets like Vietnam.
Another underserved demographic is digital-first consumers. Accustomed to instant, app-driven services, they prefer bite-sized, lifestyle-aligned insurance coverage, such as policies rewarding healthy habits or integrated into ride-hailing apps.
To explore these opportunities, Income Insurance embraced experimentation. For example, it used “fake door” – a method that presents a product as available before it is fully ready – to gauge customer interest in Droplet, a novel insurance against price surges by private-hire vehicles on rainy days.
The company also launched minimum viable products (MVPs) such as SNACK, a lifestyle micro-insurance and investment app.
By grounding decisions in data rather than intuition, Income Insurance transformed underserved segments into its growth engines. Credit must go to regulatory sandboxing in Singapore, which supports financial institutions and fintech players to experiment with innovative financial products or services in a live environment but within a well-defined space and duration.
This enabled Income Insurance to rapidly iterate new products before scaling them globally. SNACK, for one, has partnered with nearly 100 lifestyle brands and introduced flexible subscription models.
Strength in numbers
For any challenge in life, there is strength in numbers – even when you’re a big insurance company. So it is that Income Insurance’s ecosystem strategy rested on two pillars: alliances with tech giants and open infrastructure for global insurers.
For example, it teamed up with Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading superapp, to offer Grab’s ride-hailing drivers critical illness coverage for as low as S$0.30 per trip. The insurer has issued over 20 million micro-policies, filling a protection gap for self-employed drivers while acquiring customers at scale.
In fact, Income Insurance has gone global in its collaborative approach. Its HIVE platform offers Insurance-as-a-Service (IaaS) via APIs (application programming interfaces, i.e. software that allow apps to communicate with each other) to insurers worldwide. HIVE enables insurers to integrate pre-built digital products – such as SNACK’s stackable coverage – into their systems. This has reduced partners’ R&D timelines by 12 to 18 months. It also positions Income as an enabler rather than a competitor.
Meanwhile, third-party accelerators including SG Innovate connect Income with deep-tech start-ups that boost the company’s insurtech capabilities. But instead of seeking ownership stakes, Income Insurance funds ventures that align with its mission of providing coverage for underserved populations. In this way, it is growing its insurtech capabilities even as it broadens its social impact.
All these complementary collaborations have fostered a thriving ecosystem. For example, Grab provides scale, while Income Insurance contributes regulatory expertise; Vietnam’s TPBank adapt Income Insurance’s software to create revenue-generating products, such as accident coverage for QR code payments, while the Singapore firm expands its reach without heavy upfront costs.
Positive feedback loop
Income Insurance isn’t the only insurer building ecosystems. China’s Ping An Insurance has developed a comprehensive digital ecosystem spanning healthcare, auto services, real estate and banking through its platforms like Good Doctor and OneConnect.
French insurer AXA integrates health services, telemedicine and wellness programmes with traditional insurance offerings on its AXA Health Keeper platform. It has also partnered with companies like Uber to provide flexible coverage for gig workers in Europe, mirroring Income’s approach of serving underrepresented markets while building collaborative networks that transcend traditional insurance boundaries.
As our case shows, Income Insurance’s strategy of marrying niche discovery with ecosystem development works. Each success in one domain strengthens progress in the other.
Identifying gig workers’ needs led to partnerships with Grab, which later revealed opportunities in other delivery platforms such as foodpanda. Likewise, SNACK’s traction with millennials attracted insurers outside Singapore to the HIVE platform.
Much like the symbiotic relationships in a thriving ecosystem, HIVE’s global network turned up underserved segments in new regions, such as Vietnam’s domestic workers via JupViec Care. Partner feedback refines Income Insurance’s MVP approach, accelerating product validation.
Thriving in disruption
Faced with digitisation, evolving consumer preferences and the growing climate crisis, no industry – least of all insurance – can afford to keep doing what they’ve always done. To thrive, businesses need a feedback-driven strategy that enables them to identify novel markets and build collaborative ecosystems. They should also leverage real-time data to deliver agile, hyper-personalised solutions.
Income Insurance’s journey shows that companies that convert overlooked opportunities into scalable growth will not only adapt to disruption – they will define it.
Learn more about Income Insurance’s transformation in Income Insurance: Transforming Insurance Beyond Digitization.
“INSEAD, a contraction of “Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires” is a non-profit graduate-only business school that maintains campuses in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North America.”
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