A formal welcome to Silver Economy Forum 2026 in Kuala Lumpur, setting out the importance of healthy longevity and the silver economy to Malaysia's and ASEAN's future prosperity.

This opening conversation sets the agenda for the Forum’s two days of discussion, framing the silver economy as a major opportunity for inclusive growth, innovation, and shared prosperity. Speakers will consider the changing demographic landscape, the importance of enabling people to live longer and healthier lives, and ASEAN’s potential to lead in creating economies and societies that are prepared for longevity.

Frames aging as a competition for advantage rather than a shared burden. The countries that build silver economy infrastructure over the next five years will create the template for everyone else. Draws on best practices from across the region, providing an overview of the varied demographic trends and responses.

Key indicators of healthy aging, through a regional lens, spotlighting women’s cardiovascular health and the role of innovative care systems applicable to 21st-century age demography.

Asia is aging faster than any region in history, and in many countries it will happen before they are rich. The real question is not another set of measures to cope, but whether health systems built for infectious disease and maternal care can be redesigned around prevention across the whole of life: adult immunization, early detection, and the daily habits that keep people working and connected. Deciding how much prevention belongs inside publicly funded benefits is not a call health authorities can make alone; it takes a shared framework with finance ministries. Drawing on Japan's experience, including AHWIN and Tokyo's UHC Knowledge Hub, this session examines how to position prevention within policy and public finance, and how to design health financing that lasts, candidly including the decisions that came too late.

Two private roundtables at this year's SEF, one with the OECD on healthy aging's return on investment for aging workforces across Asia-Pacific, and one on adult vaccination's role in preventing the cardiovascular disease and other NCDs that drive most of the cost of aging, point to the same underlying case: the value of healthy aging and prevention to workforce participation, to health-system costs, and to economic growth is real and measurable, but it isn't yet centered in the policy and funding decisions of aging societies. Building on insights from the two roundtables and AP-CHAAI's work across the region, this panel connects what the data shows, what economists and health experts already see, and what it will take to make the case for prevention to finance ministries and business leaders.

Most insurance was built for a market of wealthy retirees and pension funds, not the much larger population across Asia-Pacific juggling careers, family responsibilities, and their own aging in parallel. As the region ages faster than any other in the world, panelists examine what a reimagined approach to prevention, risk, coverage, and value could look like, and what it will take for the industry to move from conversation to action. Zurich Insurance Group

A closer look at GCOA and BBC Storyworks' Age-Reimagined content series: the stories it spotlights, the difference it’s making, and how media narratives can improve public expectations of aging. Explores the essential nature of powerful storytelling to showcase opportunities for both doing good (philanthropic) and doing well (business) in the aging sector.

Examines China's approach to scaling interventions for healthy aging: preventive care, elder care services, insurance and financial products, and housing-plus-care retirement models. A stable policy environment is opening market opportunities for silver economy businesses serving 400 million older people, extending healthy years and contributing to growth.

Minister Nancy Shukri will outline Malaysia's commitment to turning demographic change into a source of national strength, reflecting on the role of government, business, and civil society in advancing healthy aging and strengthening the care ecosystem.

Housing, primary care, hospitals, and social care often operate separately—despite the interconnected needs people may have as they age. This conversation will examine how more integrated, person-centered models can help people access the right support at the right time, while enabling more people to live independently in their communities for longer. Speakers will explore the opportunity for Malaysia to create and scale integrated later-life care, connecting health, housing, and social support in ways that improve people's experience of care and strengthen the country's readiness for demographic change.

Recognizes a company, researcher, or initiative delivering measurable progress in healthy longevity or the silver economy.

Malaysia's Minister of Health will discuss how the country can strengthen its health system for a longer-lived population. The conversation will consider how closer coordination across public and private providers can improve access to care, strengthen prevention and primary healthcare, and help ensure that Malaysians can remain healthy and independent as they age.

A conversation with one of the industry's senior leaders on antimicrobial resistance and what it takes to build for healthy longevity at scale: R&D priorities, the partnerships that move prevention and innovation from promise to delivery, and the long-term bets that pay off over decades rather than quarters.

Treats age-inclusive design as economic infrastructure: walkable cities, age-inclusive workplaces, and productivity tools that keep older workers contributing. Ryu Iwanami presents Japan's community health and transportation partnerships as a working example, where mobility decline quickly becomes a health issue through missed appointments, isolation, and lost independence. Cities and employers that invest now outperform those that don't.

Fireside examining the legal and structural shifts needed to ensure a prosperous and successful society for all ages.

Governments can’t fund the silver economy alone. This panel looks at what it takes to bring private capital into healthy aging across the region: where investors see opportunity, what policy makes a market investable, how venture funds and industrial policy move ideas from pilot to scale, and how employers can treat workforce health as an investment, as Japan’s KENKO Investment for Health framework encourages.

Today’s challenges include pension systems built for a different era; labor markets built around careers that no longer exist; rising intergenerational tension. This panel asks what a revised social contract actually requires, who are the visionaries making changes currently, and who has the political will to build it. Anchored by new research on depopulation and aging societies from the World Demographic Association.

Geroscience starts from a simple premise: aging is the biggest risk factor for most chronic diseases, and understanding its biology may help delay some of them. This panel looks at where the science stands today, from biomarkers of biological age to early interventions being tested in the clinic, and what it would take to bring proven approaches into health systems across Asia. Speakers will also discuss accreditation and standards in a fast-growing field, and how to separate credible science from overstated claims.

The UN Decade of Healthy Aging ends in 2030 alongside the SDGs, and Kuala Lumpur is one of the last major convenings before the final stretch. Records which ASEAN signatories, and others, commit to carrying the work forward.