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Homeowners often intend for their properties to last a while, to serve as shelter for not just themselves but also family members, children, and descendants. To ensure that their wishes are met, the Home Protection Scheme (HPS) was enacted to ensure that family members could retain HDB flats in the event of the homeowner’s death, terminal illness (TI), or total permanent disability (TPD) – that is, in the case that the homeowner is suddenly unable to make mortgage payments any longer.
The Home Protection Scheme is an insurance scheme that reduces the overall mortgage to be paid for the HDB flat, and insures people up to age 65 or until all housing loans are paid. It is different from the HDB Fire Insurance (which protects against fire), and the HDB Home Insurance (which protects against general damage, robberies, repairs, etc.).
Eligibility
The Home Protection Scheme coverage only covers you if you have one of the following properties:
- an HDB flat, or
- a non-privatised HUDC (Housing and Urban Development Corporation) flat purchased before 1 November 1998.
Condominiums and other private properties are unfortunately not covered by the Home Protection Scheme.
You will also need to be the homeowner, who still has outstanding mortgage loans, and who is under 65.
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Application
There are three ways through which you can apply for the Home Protection Scheme. The first is via the Housing Development Board Bank Loan (HDB Bank Loan) – you can apply for the coverage when you are submitting the application to allow CPF withdrawals for your housing payments. The second method will be through your bank, if you are using a bank loan – similarly to the HDB loan, you will apply for coverage while authorising CPF withdrawals (at your lawyer’s office this time, rather than with HDB).
The third way is digital. The application will be made on the Central Provident Fund (CPF) online services website. To apply for HPS coverage, you will need to fill out Form HPS/45 by logging into the portal with your SingPass. Alternatively, you can take the following steps:
- Log into myCPF
- Click on ‘My Requests’
- Click on ‘Home Protection Scheme (HPS)
- Click on ‘Apply/Adjust HPS Cover’
- Fill out and submit the form
You can also check the status of your application again once submitted by logging into myCPF Online Services and selecting ‘My Activities’ to view the application.
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Sharing the Home Protection Scheme Coverage
If you co-own the property you would like to apply HPS for, you may want to split the HPS coverage with your co-owner. In general, most people will split the coverage according to how the property’s monthly housing instalments (mortgages etc.) are split – if you are paying the instalments for the house on your own, you should be insured for 100% of the loan.
On the other hand, if you share responsibility for the housing instalments with other co-owners, then you may split the HPS coverage accordingly. As mentioned above, many will opt to split accordingly as per how they split housing payments so that the share of HPS cover will match the proportion of payments being handled by each co-owner. However, this isn’t mandatory – as long as the total coverage is 100% under HPS, the HPS split can be different from the housing payment split.
For instance, even if you were covering 50% of the housing payments each, one person could elect to have 100% of the HPS cover. Of course, this means they will take on the higher premium costs onto their Ordinary Account – we encourage co-owners to balance this with their other needs from the OA, including the need to save for retirement.
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If for some reason your co-owner’s coverage for HPS was rejected due to health reasons, you will need to take up 100% of the HPS cover to ensure that everything remains protected. This is also dependent on you being in good health.
We do recommend, however, that your HPS shares should at least match your housing loan commitments. This is because the Home Protection Scheme is still insurance, and the claim payouts are dependent on the total insured sums and the shared coverage. In the event that a claim happens and you are covered for less than your housing loan service commitments, the payouts provided to you will be according to the HPS share amount. If the HPS cover share is less than your monthly payment commitments, you may find that the payouts do not cover your commitments if your HPS share is lower.
Other Home Protection Scheme Administrative Matters
Most transactions related to the Home Protection Scheme (other than payments, which are withdrawn from your CPF accounts) will take place on myCPF. For instance, if the premium amount has exceeded what is within the Ordinary Account, then you will log on to fill out form HPS/7 which tops up your account to pay the premium.
Separately, if there is a need for a different person other than the insured to pay the premium (e.g. if there is an insufficient amount to make payments), then they will need to log into your own myCPF account and fill out form HPS/7FM which allows the CPF board to withdraw the premium for the location covered under the HPS from your Ordinary Account instead of the insurer’s account.
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Additionally, in the cases of disability, illness, and death, there are forms you will need to fill out to claim benefits. As the Home Protection Scheme is an insurance scheme, you will be able to get certain benefits on either medical grounds or death grounds. For HPS benefit claims on medical grounds (e.g. terminal illness, total permanent disability), you will log onto myCPF to file for form HPS/IC. For claims on the grounds of death, you will fill out form HPS/D on myCPF.
Finally, should you choose not to continue with the Home Protection Scheme any longer, you may terminate your coverage by submitting form HPS/45A.
All of the above items can be found on myCPF once you log in with SingPass and navigate to the Home Protection Scheme section.
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