ITIC APAC 2026 | Insurance market dynamics – the future of insurance in APAC

The ITIJ team have been reporting from ITIC APAC in Singapore (15–17 June 2026), sharing the discussions that took place at the conference. Read all reports.

Julien Tardivat, Founder, Sirikya Consulting

Tardivat began by stating that “for years, insurers believed medical inflation was the problem”, noting that in reality, it is “only the symptom” of the rapid expansion of “expectations, utilisation, provider behaviour, and product promises” across the healthcare sector in recent decades.

This, he explained, is often especially true in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, which is experiencing a range of converging factors that have combined into a perfect storm for medical inflation.

These factors include the world’s fastest-growing private health markets, a rising middle class, ageing populations, employer competition for talent – and consequently better healthcare provision through them – and gaps in public healthcare provision. All of these things have led to medical inflation “consistently being above CPI”.

The result, he continued, is that “premiums are rising faster than sustainability”, with healthcare costs outpacing both insurance premiums and wage growth across many nations in the region.

This in turn has led to a feedback loop of employers resisting jumps in annual premiums for health insurance, leading to more of the costs being transferred on to the patient.

“The issue is no longer cyclical inflation,” he explained, “it is structural cost escalation.”

The result for insurers and providers, he said, is a situation where “at some point, affordability becomes the primary underwriting challenge”.

Tardivat noted the obvious potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to improve insurance operations, but warned against “overpromising” about its benefits. He recommended that “future competitive advantage may come from intelligence and intervention capability, not simply underwriting capacity”.

Finally, he outlined a strategy for insurers looking to navigate these challenges, comprised of three pillars:

Pillar 1 – Better cost and claims control: most insurers reprice annually, review claims manually, and react to high-cost cases after the fact. Better automation, smarter pre-authorisations, and proactive case governance is critical to maintaining costs

Pillar 2 – Smarter product design: products are largely generic, one-size-fits-all, and split cleanly between local and international. Instead, they should be tiered, hybrid local/international, AI-personalised, and built on sustainable architecture

Pillar 3 – Operational and digital resilience: operations are fragmented, workflows are manual, triage is reactive, and the insurer is dependent on whatever the provider decides. Greater integration, better workflows, AI-supported triage, and stronger partnerships between insurers, assistance, and healthcare providers are critical.

Kanika Puri, Chief Operating Officer, Fast Cover

Puri began by highlighting the recovery of international travel post-Covid-19, using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

She noted that the ABS recorded 12.26 million outbound trips in the 2024/25 financial year, 9.2% above the pre-pandemic peak, and in fact the highest level ever recorded.

She also reported that “the market is tilting towards the self-organising leisure traveller”, with holiday travel now 60% of all trips – previously 57% – while business travel has fallen from 8% to 5%.

In terms of destinations, she added that according to the same data, “while Indonesia leads by far” – that country being home to Bali, a holiday destination that has long been popular with Australian tourists – other Asian nations have also been the beneficiaries of rising Australian travel.

Other nations on the top 10 list include New Zealand, Japan, China, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Fiji, Singapore, and the Philippines.

The US – formerly a top destination for Australian travellers – is “not even close to the top 10”, Puri noted, with travel at around 69% of pre-Covid levels.

Puri continued by explaining that this rising tide of travel posed a challenge to travel insurers.

She noted that these travellers comprised a broad range of different people – younger travellers who are on average “adventurous but budget-driven” and who see insurance as a “tick-box” exercise; families who “want comprehensive, but who are price sensitive”; and seniors, who are “cautious and high-need, but who are willing to pay for peace of mind”. All of these groups, Puri said, were usually uninformed about what their insurance covered.

Alongside this, one in seven Australians travelled with no cover at all, despite a majority of them considering it. “They weren’t unaware. They were unconvinced,” Puri argued, adding that key reasons behind their lack of cover included the destination feeling safe, belief that insurance was of poor value, and a notion that “I can manage it myself”.