With large numbers of expatriates working for international firms, Hong Kong and Singapore may still be two of the main international private medical insurance (IPMI) markets for insurers in Asia, but Vietnam and Thailand are both on the rise, according to Jacklyn Tan, director of regional employee benefits Asia for Howden Insurance Brokers.
Part of the reason is the rising cost of living in both Singapore and Hong Kong, but another part is also the decrease in expatriate benefits.
“Because of the rising cost of living in both Singapore and Hong Kong especially after the Covid pandemic, we are seeing more people move over to Thailand and Vietnam,” Tan, who is based in Singapore, told Health & Protection in an exclusive interview.
“Thailand and Vietnam are very much the upcoming market for expatriates, simply because not many companies provide expat packages.
“If you work in a Hong Kong or Singapore, it is very much a localised package, unless you are already a C-suite or key person.”
She said the use of local policies in both Hong Kong and Singapore had been singnificantly increased and that expatriate policies were much more restricted in use.
“Hence, some of the expatriates we see are already moving over to Thailand and Vietnam after the Covid pandemic,“ Tan (pictured) continued.
“They see no reason in living in a such a high-cost country like Hong Kong or Singapore, where the company is not providing all these special allowances or fringe benefits anymore.”
Britain tops list of expats
And when it comes to the countries expats are originating from, while Britain may have left the region as a colonial power since 1963 in Singapore and in 1997 in Hong Kong, its expats still rank highly on the list.
In Hong Kong, most expats now come from China, but outside of that group Britain leads, according to Steven Luk, executive director of employee benefits for Howden in Hong Kong.
“I think the top is still Chinese,” Luk said, but he noted that Britain was the next largest group, followed by Australia with the US third – though not as many as before the pandemic.
But because Hong Kong, like nearby Macau, is a special administrative region (SAR) of China, it could be debatable on whether Chinese people in Hong Kong should be considered expatriates.
In Singapore it is a similar story, according to Tan. Malaysians there are the main group of expatriates, but that is debatable as the link between the two countries is so close, with many people living just across the water from Singapore.
Singapore was once a part of the Malaysian state, and Tan said there are many Malaysians working in Singapore like herself.
Tan said that many Malaysians are not at the C-suite level “but we choose to work in Singapore because of a stronger currency and a better pay“.
“So, the majority of expatriates in Singapore, if you include Malaysians, is still Malaysian,“ she continued.
“Other than Malaysian, if you talk about expats from the other side of the world like Europe and the US, then it is mainly still the UK, then Australia and also the US.
“But there is also a large number of Malaysians who work in Singapore but live in Malaysia, who wouldn’t count as expats.“
With the Malaysian state of Johor just a 30-minute drive across the water from Singapore, “many people live in Malaysia and work in Singapore,” she continued.
“But it’s not just coming into work,” she said.
“Many Malaysians have been sending the kids every day to Singaporean schools since they were very young.“
The result is one of the busiest border checkpoints in the world for both inflow and outflow on a daily and annual basis, Tan concluded.