Work injury insurance is the policy most Singapore employers buy once and then forget. It is legally required, it sits in the compliance folder, and every year it renews quietly in the background. For a lot of business owners, the only moment of attention it gets is when the invoice arrives and the number is bigger than last year.
This year, that number is moving for a real reason. And the reason is worth understanding, because it changes what a sensible renewal actually looks like.
What changed, and when
On 1 November 2025, the Ministry of Manpower raised the compensation limits under the Work Injury Compensation Act. These are the maximum amounts payable when an employee is hurt, permanently injured, or dies because of work. MOM lifted them to keep pace with wage growth and rising medical costs.
The new limits are not small adjustments. Based on MOM’s published figures, the maximum payout for a work-related death rose from S$225,000 to S$269,000. The maximum for total permanent incapacity rose from S$289,000 to S$346,000. The cap on medical expenses for a single accident went from S$45,000 to S$53,000. Across the board, that is close to a 20 percent increase in what an employer can be liable for.
Higher payouts mean higher exposure for the insurer standing behind the policy. So as work injury policies come up for renewal through 2026, they are being repriced to match. This is the part landing on desks right now.
Why your premium can rise even with zero claims
Here is the part that frustrates business owners. You can have a clean record, a safe worksite, and not a single claim in years, and still see a higher renewal.
That is because work injury pricing is not only about your company. Insurers look at the wider sector. If accident frequency rises across construction, manufacturing, food and beverage, or logistics, the cost of covering that risk goes up for everyone in the pool. Add the new, higher legal limits on top, and the maths moves before you have done anything wrong.
Some market commentary points to renewal increases in the range of 30 to 40 percent for certain employers, even claim-free ones. That figure will not apply evenly, and your own outcome depends on your industry, headcount, and wage bill. But the direction is clear, and pretending otherwise does not help anyone plan.
From IPG’s point of view, the useful response is not to shop on price alone. It is to make sure that what you are paying for actually matches your business as it is today.
Who legally needs work injury insurance
Work injury compensation insurance is not optional for most employers. Under the law, you must hold it for all employees doing manual work, regardless of how much they earn, and for non-manual employees earning S$2,600 a month or less in gross salary.
That line catches more businesses than people expect. A growing company often assumes “office staff, no manual work, probably fine.” Then you look closer and find a warehouse assistant, a delivery driver, a technician, or junior staff under the salary threshold. The obligation is on the employer to get this right, and it links directly to your duties around work injury compensation cover.
If you employ Work Permit or S-Pass holders, there is a second layer. Under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, you are responsible for their medical costs even when those costs run past the WICA medical cap. In practice, that means the statutory limit is a floor, not a ceiling, and your coverage for foreign workers needs to be sized for the real bills, not just the minimum.
The renewal mistakes that cost the most
Where employers get caught is rarely the headline premium. It is the detail underneath. A few things are worth checking before you sign anything this year.
First, the extensions. Most work injury policies include add-ons beyond the basic Act benefits, often called non-Act extensions. Things like cover for an employee travelling to and from work, usually capped at a set sub-limit. If those sub-limits were set years ago, they may now sit well below the new compensation levels. The base policy keeps up with the law automatically. The extensions often do not. That gap is easy to miss and expensive to discover.
Second, the confusion between work injury cover and staff benefits. Group medical or group personal accident plans are employee benefits. They are valuable, but they are not a substitute for work injury compensation, which covers your legal liability as an employer. Treating one as the other leaves a hole exactly where the law expects you to be covered. This is also why it helps to look at work injury and your wider employee benefits as two separate questions, not one.
Third, disclosure. When you renew, you are expected to give the insurer accurate information about job scope, wages, and headcount. If that information is incomplete or out of date, a claim can be reduced or refused, and the insurer may even seek to recover money from you. With higher limits in play, the cost of getting this wrong is larger than it used to be. A renewal is a good moment to make sure your declared workforce matches your actual one.
How to think about it this year
None of this is a reason for alarm. Work injury claims are still relatively uncommon for most businesses, and the system exists to protect both sides. The point is simply that 2026 is not a year to rubber-stamp the renewal and move on.
Based on the direction of the market, we expect work injury premiums to stay firm rather than soften in the near term, given that the higher limits are now baked into the law. For employers, that makes the quality of the review matter more than the size of the discount. The right questions are practical ones. Are we insuring everyone the law requires? Do our extensions and sub-limits still make sense against the new figures? Have we sized foreign worker medical cover for real costs? Is our declared information accurate?
That is where having someone look at the whole picture earns its keep. The job is not to sell you a bigger policy. It is to make sure the policy you are already legally required to hold actually does what you are paying it to do, and that you are not quietly carrying a gap into the next claim.
If your work injury renewal is coming up, speak with IPG before you sign, so your cover matches the new limits and the team you actually employ.