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Is Life Insurance a Wellness Game Now?

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John Hancock is going to give its life-insurance customers a discount if they try to stay healthy. The company is planning to attach a free version of its wellness program, Vitality, to all life-insurance policies. Using this program, customers will be able to log witness and health information. In return for this information, the company will provide discounts to the customers at places like Amazon and REI. As a customer, you can also receive a free Fitbit for an extra $2 per month or an Apple Watch for $25. If the customers can hit certain targets, they don’t have to pay more for the devices and they can also get up to 15% discount on the annual premiums.

This is a kind of motivation being offered to the customers of life insurance. It may help some people to think more about their health. Even though financial benefit is what may motivate more people will ultimately the benefit will be for them only. It also benefits the company because if the customers are healthy, the risk factor of them dying will go down and the company will be able to defer the payment of claims.

Wearables in life insurance

Since some insurance companies now offer lower premiums based on the data from fitness trackers worn by the customers. However, there is a point which people are debating- does a policy holder’s number of steps really improve his or her motility? Even though there is a link between increased risk of heart disease and a sedentary lifestyle, how many daily steps can reduce this risk? Nobody is sure about this.

A popular daily target is 10,000 steps. But it doesn’t mean this is the only way of staying healthy and fit and neither it means that doing this will dramatically decrease the possibility of health problems. If you just take a couple of thousand steps at a brisk pace, or you maintain a low BMI, avoiding tobacco, limiting alcohol and adequate sleep may also help you to improve motility. But people who are walking 10,000 steps every day, may already have such positive healthy combinations.

Then there comes the concern of data security. Not many people will like to share their personal data with an insurance company. Another important aspect is that cheap devices are inaccurate and so the data may not be a sound foundation for deciding whether someone is healthy or not. Interpretation of the data can be another important aspect that has to be taken care of before it can become usable everywhere. All these factors may result in life insurance dispute. If such problems appear in future, you may need a different kind of life insurance dispute lawyer to handle the changes happening because of fitness data and information tracking and passing on in relation to life insurance.

If this is a fad, then many insurers may be wary of attaching themselves to such fads. Maybe there are more fundamental changes necessary in consumer technology industry before it can become a mainstream thing.