1.  The underlying interest rates are partly funded by tax payers' monies (the SMRA extra interest will cost tax payer $700 million every year). Thus it is impossible for anyone and any private institutions to get such high risk-free rate by mere investment. 
2. People are "forced" to purchase an annuity program and thus giving them a life time income.
3. The publicity creates a lot of awareness on financial planning. People has to sit up and try to understand the technical details. Perhaps in the past people just ignore the importance of planning but now people even has to decide which of the 12 options they want to be in.
4. With greater awareness now, it creates opportunity for financial adviser like me to have a more meaningful conversation with others
5. The national annuity program has a major flaw which is that it is not "participating". The jargon just means that the monthly payout has no ability to increase to cope with inflation. This just means greater opportunity for financial advisers to help individuals to think of ways to handle this short fall.

This being said, I think private insurers can forget about targeting the Minimum Sum pie for their annuity program. Who would want to purchase an annuity using thier Minimum Sum? However, as I understand one insurer has a market share of more than 90% in annuity. This means that the rest of the insurers market share is insignificant. With the introduction of the CPF Life, the entire pie will shrink and thus I think the insurers sharing the "10%" pie can just close shop!

As a side track, just very recently an insurer made a big blunder. They introduce an annuity product. As part of a nice and good feature, the surrender value of the annuity after 1 year from inception was a guaranteed 2.5%pa return. You know what? A lot of adviser (coming from one particular group - not my company of course!) sold the annuity as a fixed deposit! They told their clients that this is like a FD which guarantees 2.5% return! With such low interest rate now, this is a VERY GOOD FD. As a result, a huge number of customers bought the annuity product with the intention of surrendering it after just 1 year. The Asset Under Management (AUM) shot up like nobody business. Upon realising this, the insurer quickly closed the loophole in just one week after launching the new product. But I think it is too late, it has already taken in a HUGE amount of liability already. Well.... if I knew of such loophole early, I could have told my clients & relatives to buy this "Fixed Deposit"! Too bad I only knew of this loophole just the evening before the loophole was closed. I pity the insurer. They have to give 2.5% return after one year to the surrending policyholders plus commission (should be around 1%) plus expense ratio (maybe 1%?) totally 4.5%! How to get risk-free 4.5% in this market condition? Poor insurer - got "sabo" by a particular group of *insurance advisers.

 *This particular group of insurance advisers had indeed put their clients' interest first by introducing them a "too-good-to-be-true" product. But is it ethical to do this since they would cause the insurer into the red? This is debatable.