Quinlan & Associates sees “buy term, invest the rest (‘BTIR’)” strategy as a compelling alternative to whole life, especially in an era of low-cost direct-to-consumer (“D2C”) insurance and wealth solutions in Hong Kong 

Hong Kong, 8 December 2025 – Quinlan & Associates has released a landmark report examining the case for BTIR as an alternative to whole life insurance. 

The report, titled, BTIR 2.0 – Buy Term, Invest the Rest: The Case for Changing the Way Life Insurance and Investments are Bought in Hong Kong in the Age of Digital D2C Solutions, evaluates the status quo of Hong Kong’s life insurance landscape, including the benefits and drawbacks of whole life insurance. The report further analyses why BTIR may offer a compelling alternative and interviews founders of Bowtie (Hong Kong’s leading virtual insurer) and Syfe (APAC’s leading digital investment platform managing over USD 10 billion in assets), given the rise of digital D2C insurance and WealthTech players respectively. 

“Hong Kong remains the world’s global leader when it comes to insurance penetration and density, with life insurance representing an HKD 374 billion premium pool in 2024 and roughly three in every four life policies purchased being whole life plans,” said Benjamin Quinlan, CEO of Quinlan & Associates, and author of the report. “However, despite their benefits, whole life insurance policies carry notable risks and limitations, setting the stage ripe for disruption.” 

The author attributes these drawbacks to: (1) high premiums; (2) modest returns; (3) potential conflicts of interest; (4) poor fulfilment ratios; and (5) heavily discounted surrender values. They point to cost effective term life plans and digital investment channels as an alternative route to whole life in satisfying individuals’ mortality protection and wealth creation needs. 

Term life insurance — also known as pure life insurance — provides high protection value without bundled savings or investment components. “Virtual insurers now make it simple for consumers to purchase term life coverage online and invest the rest through digital WealthTech platforms. We expect BTIR strategies to gain strong momentum in Hong Kong in the coming years, offering a practical solution to the city’s growing protection gap,” said Fred Ngan, Co‑Founder of Bowtie, a leading Hong Kong‑based virtual insurer. 

“For too long, investors have been limited to buying expensive and quite complex whole life policies. BTIR empowers them by making the process crystal clear: term insurance for protection, digital investing for growth,” said Dhruv Arora, Founder and CEO of Syfe. He added, “WealthTechs have perfected the ‘Invest the Rest’ component – at Syfe we offer an intuitive user journey and considerably lower fees than traditional managers for hundreds of thousands of users in Asia-Pacific. This efficiency is the engine that drives the exponential difference in returns, providing much needed control and liquidity which are lacking in Whole Life, and effectively making the case for BTIR financially.” 

The report highlights that a digitally enabled BTIR 2.0 strategy significantly outperforms not only whole life insurance by a factor of ~2.5-6.8x, but also the traditional BTIR 1.0 strategy by ~1.3x. Traditional term life insurance premiums could be as much as ~22.0x cheaper than whole life insurance for the same sum assured, while digital D2C players further offers ~32% lower term insurance premiums than traditional players. 

Recognising these winds of change, the author expects different industry stakeholders to face a variety of impacts. “If a BTIR 2.0 strategy is applied to Hong Kong’s entire whole life insurance market, then there is the potential to meet and even exceed the city’s mortality protection needs in 55 years,” stated Mr. Quinlan.