On October 8th, 2024, Singapore experienced an unprecedented island-wide disruption involving Singtel’s telecommunications network. The hotlines of the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) and police, as well as those of hospitals and banks, could not be reached for more than three hours. This outage affected emergency services, medical centers, and banks, leaving many people unable to access essential services.

Netizens began submitting outage reports as early as 2 pm on crowdsourced outage website Downdetector when they could not get through public service hotlines. At 3.18 pm, there were 2,706 reports on Downdetector. Hospitals and medical centers affected included KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), Changi General Hospital (CGH), Singapore General Hospital (SGH), SingHealth, and National Cancer Centre Singapore.

This outage is a wake-up call for insurance executives. It highlights the importance of having a contingency plan in place for such events. Insurance companies need to be prepared for the unexpected and have a plan in place to ensure that their clients can access essential services during an outage.

One solution to this problem is parametric insurance. Parametric insurance is a type of insurance that pays out when a specific event occurs, such as a natural disaster or a power outage. It is based on predefined parameters, such as wind speed or rainfall, and pays out automatically when those parameters are met. This type of insurance can help ensure that clients have access to essential services during an outage.

The outage in Singapore is just one example of how an unexpected event can disrupt essential services. Insurance executives need to be proactive and ensure that their clients are protected in the event of an outage. With Riskwolf, insurance companies can turn real-time data into insurance. Using unique real-time data and dynamic risk modeling, Riskwolf enables insurers to build and operate parametric insurance at scale. Simple. Reliable. Fast.

Don’t wait for an outage to happen. Contact Riskwolf today to learn more about how parametric insurance can help protect your clients during unexpected events.

Source: The Star