$1,000,000 coverage for less that $100

Yes, you read right. It's $1 million dollars death coverage for less than $100, or $88 to be precise for a man who is 40 years old for a 20 years coverage. It's even cheaper than your mortgage insurance (where the sum assured is reducing each year).

Before we continue, we are talking about a "term" insurance:
Term is a type of life insurance that provides a potential death benefit for a fixed period or "term." This is commonly a flat premium for say, 5, 10, 15, 20, or 30 years. After the end of the term the policy no longer provides a death benefit
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/term-life-insurance.asp
To add, it has no cash values at the end of the term. It's just like your car or mortgage insurance or even your electronic good insurance (fridge, washing machine, etc.).

Do I need a million dollar coverage? Well it depends.

Below are 3 commonly consideration you might want to take note:

A) Current Debts (house, car, etc.)

Do you know that you can use Term insurance to replace your HDB's Home Protection Scheme (HPS)? With this Term plan also, you do need to get a new HPS when you get a new house, which is usually more expensive because the HPS is based on your current age and not the younger you whom 10 or 20 years ago took up HPS when you got your first house.

B) Family regular living expenses

You can just use your monthly expenses and multiply by the number of years you need to support your family.

E.g. A new born just join the family and assuming your monthly expenses is $2,000. So for the new born to be independent, we assume he/she will take about 25years. So we just multiply accordingly: $2,000 x 25y x 12m = $600,000.

C) Children Education

For a 3 years course in a local universities (NUS/NTU), based on inflation rate of 5%, in 20 years time, the course fee will come to about $71,000. If we add in the living expenses with an inflation of 1.6%, the grand total comes to $142k.

And if we are talking about overseas education, like Australia, the total cost will come to $440k

Still unsure if you really need the $1mil coverage? Talk with your financial advisor and they are the best person to advise you.

What is Insurance?

Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. 

The above is extracted from Wikipedia. And you can easily find several other "textbook-like" variations on the definition of Insurance via the Internet search engine(s). While the meaning from multiple sources could arguably be standardised in a way or another, the diversification largely stems from one's relativity to the value(s) of such a hedging tool and/or potential loss to be covered.

Consumerism is a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. 

In my opinion, one of the main deterrents to transferring contingent loss to Insurance is a comprehensive set of normative beliefs that doing so would inevitably incur high costs. And such valuations is especially subjective while the benefits that the product/service could bring about, is intangible.

Insurance, in its native origins, is simply a plain vanilla pooling-of-risk instrument. However, this instrument has been evolving and undergone a series of transformation into sophisticated insurance products that you can find today. It could be bundled with investment/savings; includes extensive coverage via means of a multiplier till certain age; offers a wider spectrum of coverage to include for eg., early-stage Dread Diseases; etc. This would concomitantly explain why the cost of insurance has moved northwards with the evolution of it. Having said that, the plain vanilla form of Insurance remains available till date. However, shoppers for insurance are increasingly spoilt (or confused) with choices. 

Hence, it remains important (if not, even more important!) to engage a trusted Advisor who champions your interest in helping you understand your options. If you ain't sure what are the qualities of a trusted Advisor, then don't stop short of contacting either one of us!