You will be able to list the insurance and benefits an employer usually provides and which ones you no longer have.
On your last day at a salaried job, HR probably sent you a checklist: return your laptop, submit your final claims, hand in your pass. It probably did not list what you were giving up. Your group hospital plan, the outpatient card you used for a fever, the life cover you may not have known you had, your sick leave and your annual leave all ended that day. Nothing arrived to tell you. Most new freelancers find out one at a time, usually at a clinic counter.
This lesson is about seeing the whole list at once.
Employers in Singapore offer different packages, so yours may have had more or less than this. The common items are worth checking one by one.
Group hospital cover pays towards hospital bills, often on top of national cover. Group outpatient cover pays for GP visits and sometimes specialists, dental or health screenings. Group term life pays a sum to your family if you die while employed, often a multiple of your salary. Some employers add group critical illness or disability cover too.
Then there is paid time. Paid sick leave and hospitalisation leave mean an illness costs you a few days of feeling unwell, not a few days of income. Paid annual leave means a holiday does not cost you a week's earnings. Public holidays work the same way.
And there is the employer's share of CPF, which module 3 dealt with.
All of these depend on employment. When the job ends, they end. Some group policies offer a way to convert to an individual policy within a short time after you leave, so if you have only just left, check with your former employer's HR or the insurer straight away.
There is one more item that rarely appears on a benefits list, because employers are required to have it. The Work Injury Compensation Act lets employees claim compensation for injuries and illnesses caused by their work, without having to prove the employer was at fault. Employers must have insurance to cover this for most of their staff. The Ministry of Manpower explains who is covered and what can be claimed.
The Act covers employees. Most self-employed people have nothing in its place. If a freelance photographer falls from a ladder on a shoot, or a freelance trainer injures a knee during a class, there is no equivalent scheme paying their medical leave and compensation. The bills and the lost income are theirs to deal with.
Platform workers are the exception. Lesson 3.3 explained that the Platform Workers Act brings work injury compensation to the ride-hail, taxi and delivery workers it covers. So Hafiz, the private-hire driver from module 3, has some injury cover through the Act that Mei, as a freelance designer, does not.
Some cover does not depend on a job at all.
MediShield Life is the national basic health insurance for Singapore citizens and permanent residents. It covers you for life, whether you are employed, self-employed or not working. It is designed for large hospital bills and certain costly outpatient treatments, in public hospitals and at the ward classes it is designed for. Lesson 4.1 of The Singapore personal finance system, Hospital bills: what basic national cover pays and what shield plans add, explains what it pays and where its limits sit. The premiums can be paid from MediSave, which is one more reason the MediSave contributions in module 2 matter.
Any insurance you bought yourself also stays with you, as long as you keep paying the premiums. An integrated shield plan, a term life policy or a personal accident policy you took out while employed did not depend on the job.
Once you see the gaps, the natural next step is to call someone who sells insurance. Do that later. First, write the gaps down in your own words.
The reason is simple. Someone selling insurance tends to start from the products they sell. If you arrive with a written list, the conversation starts from your gaps instead, and you can judge each suggestion against a specific need. You are also less likely to buy something you did not need because it was presented well.
Mei's list, written after she left her agency job, started like this. Group hospital cover: lost, MediShield Life kept, no shield plan of her own yet. Outpatient card: lost. Group term life: lost, and she had not known it existed. Sick leave: lost. Annual leave: lost. Work injury compensation: lost, nothing in its place. Employer CPF: lost, partly replaced by her voluntary CPF plan from module 3.
That list took her ten minutes, and it changed how she spoke to the adviser she met the next month.
Find whatever you still have from your last job: an offer letter, a benefits booklet, an old payslip or an email from HR. Go through it item by item, and mark each one as you go.
List every benefit you had in your last job and mark each as kept, lost or replaced.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).