The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued a consultation paper that proposes to establish a legislative framework for a new protected cell company (PCC) corporate structure.
The paper, published on July 7, follows the announcement made by deputy prime minister and trade and industry minister Gan Kim Yong, at the Association of Banks in Singapore’s (ABS) annual dinner on June 25. Gan is also the chairman of MAS.
In his speech, Gan highlighted the more complex risks that are harder to price and that Asia remains significantly underinsured. For instance, natural disasters caused about US$65 billion in economic losses across Asia in 2025 and over 90% of these were uninsured.
“This is increasing the need for alternative risk transfer solutions, including captive insurance, insurance-linked securities, and risk pooling. Companies globally are seeking to retain greater control and flexibility in risk financing and retention or procure risk coverage to complement traditional insurance capacity,” says MAS.
According to the central bank’s consultation paper, the PCC structure allows assets and liabilities to be housed under individual “cells” within a single legal entity. This will enable multiple risk arrangements to be housed under a common platform while ensuring that the assets and obligations of each cell remain legally ring-fenced from one another. The framework will also provide additional flexibility over most existing corporate structures.
The framework is designed to support a range of insurance use cases, specifically captive insurance, insurance-linked securities (ILS) and sovereign risk pools.
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Captive insurance refers to a self-insurance programme for a firm’s own or its affiliates’ risks. This allows it to manage its risks and premium rate volatility arising from reliance on the commercial insurance market. Under the PCC framework, companies will be able to establish dedicated captives where a firm can manage multiple self-insurance programmes through separate cells within a common core. A firm may also opt for “rent-a-captive” solutions, which mean individual companies can procure the services of a captive facility, which is typically sponsored by the insurance management arm of a licensed broker to establish and use cells of a PCC for their captive insurance activities for a fee. Under this, firms may also opt to use a segregated cell to run its risk programmes within a shared captive facility provided a service provider.
Insurers can also tap on the capital markets to secure additional risk-bearing capacity by issuing ILS through separate cells within a PCC structure without having to establish a new special purpose vehicle (SPV) for each transaction. ILS are essentially financial instruments that securitise insurance contracts and allow insurers and reinsurers to transfer specific risks to the capital markets.
Finally, with sovereign risk pools - which are typically set up by multiple participating governments to share and manage risks in a diversified portfolio and secure insurance coverage against events such as natural disasters or climate shocks - PCCs can support insurance facilities that pool risks across multiple countries or participants such as disaster risk financing initiatives.
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The consultation will close on Aug 7.
The PCC Act is targeted to be implemented in 2028.
