The nine-year gap

Most discussion of longevity starts with lifespan. Allen Law starts with the years that lifespan statistics hide. Speaking to Michael Macfarlane, he cites a gap of about nine years, across the globe, between how long people live and how long they remain healthy. In Singapore, which is often named among the world's blue zones, he says the data shows a gap of a good ten years, even as life expectancy has risen.

That gap, in Law's account, is what is driving the industry. Macfarlane opens with a UBS report that identified power, artificial intelligence and longevity as the three areas of economic activity likely to drive equity markets over the next decade. Law admits he was surprised that longevity ranked alongside AI, until he read the report's estimate of a US$8 trillion longevity market by 2030 and considered where that demand comes from.

He also offers a telling piece of survey evidence. Asked whether they want to live longer, more than half of people say no, he reports. Asked whether they would want to live longer if they stayed healthy through those extra years, almost everyone says yes.

So it's literally, it's not about how long you live, it's about how healthy you can live your life and fulfil that purpose in life.

— Allen Law, Wealth Office

For investors, this reframes what the longevity market is selling. The product is healthy years more than extra years, and the demand for it looks far broader than the demand for longer life alone.

Why sick care cannot pay for itself

Law describes the system most people know. If you are not sick, do not come. If you are sick, you receive a treatment plan or a bag of medicine and go home, and if you feel better you do not come back. That model, he says, has been in place for decades.

The economics are now working against it. Life expectancy is rising while healthspan is not moving, so people spend longer in poor health and need care for longer. Medical costs rise each year and expectations of care rise with them. Law notes research showing that most countries would go bankrupt if they continued on the current model, and asks whether governments can keep raising taxes to pay for it. He thinks not.

He sees two forces pushing towards prevention. One is social. After Covid, he says, people began to treat health, including mental health, as critical, and to ask how they could avoid chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

None of us want to spend our last 10 years in sickbed.

— Allen Law, Wealth Office

The other is economic, as governments confront healthcare budgets they cannot sustain. Law also points to research showing that the United States spends the most on healthcare yet ranks low on health outcomes, which he finds alarming and which, he suggests, shows that spending alone does not produce health.

Six pillars and personal responsibility

Law's company, Morrow, is built on what he calls a lifestyle medicine foundation with six pillars. Physical activity is the first. Nutrition and diet follow, then sleep, then stress management, which he links directly to sleep. The last two are avoiding harmful substances such as heavy drinking and smoking, and positive social connection, which he ties to mental health.

Macfarlane highlights the element of personal responsibility in this model. Many people, he observes, pay for a gym or yoga membership and so invest in fitness, while neglecting the other areas that shape the later years of life. A person can be very fit and still be missing much of what closes the gap. Law agrees that the pillars are interdependent. He describes the recognition of social connection as a silver lining of the pandemic, when isolation showed many people how much their relationships with friends and family mattered.

The design is notable for how ordinary its ingredients are. None of the six pillars depends on a scientific breakthrough. The opportunity Law describes is about building the infrastructure, the centres, programmes and habits, that brings what is already known to large numbers of people. Macfarlane quotes one description of Morrow as a bridge between maturing science and the mass market.

Private capital as proof of concept

Law's case for private capital taking the lead rests on speed. Most countries, he says, are constrained by their existing healthcare model. If a government spends more on prevention, it worries about spending less on sick care, or it must find extra resources for both. Singapore has made small investments in preventive care that are raising awareness, but he does not see mass adoption yet.

So Law and his partners decided not to wait. The aim is to establish a proof of concept that others can follow, and to nudge governments to increase their investment in prevention. Once preventive care works, he argues, it trims future spending on sick care, and until countries invest seriously in it, healthcare costs will keep rising. He calls the present a tipping point.

Alongside Morrow, Law has launched a US$70 million venture fund to back founders and early-stage companies working on human healthspan, particularly in Asia, where he sees a funding gap. He describes the field as broad and still evolving, with no single solution likely to dominate. The approach is to place bets across different pockets of the industry, back the right founders and ideas, and help them scale.

For principals weighing the sector, Law's framing is useful because it ties a large market estimate to a concrete mechanism. The money, in his account, follows the healthspan gap, the fiscal strain of sick care, and a shift in what people want from their later years.