Bianca Walsh· Job Architecture Lead, Pinehurst Foods
Asked in Benefits & Wellbeing ·
Fertility and family-building cover in Singapore: lifetime cap, cycles, or a flat allowance?
Regional headquarters of a financial services group in Singapore, about 950 employees here and another 600 across Hong Kong, Malaysia and India. Our group medical plan excludes fertility treatment entirely and we have had sustained requests to add something.
The options our broker has put forward are a lifetime monetary cap through the insurer, a managed programme priced per cycle, or a taxable allowance that employees claim against receipts. Budget is roughly 0.3% of regional payroll.
I would also like it to cover adoption and surrogacy where local law permits, so that it is not only for people going through IVF. Which structure have people found fairest and easiest to run?
1 helpful · 1 agree · 3 replies · 16 views · 6 following
Accepted answer· by Rosa Novak
We went with a reimbursement allowance, the equivalent of about 15,000 Singapore dollars lifetime per employee, claimable against any family-building cost including adoption fees and egg freezing. Chosen precisely because it was the only structure that worked the same in all five of our Asian locations, where what clinics may offer differs a lot. Uptake has been 1.1% of headcount a year, so cost has run at about half your 0.3% budget. The downside is that it is taxable to the employee in most of our locations and that it does not help with choosing a clinic. Nobody has complained about either.
Read in the conversation ↓
