A year after launching John Hancock Vitality, the life insurance giant has begun expanding the reach of its connected-health product to further engage with customers.
That's according to company's SVP of marketing and strategy, Brooks Tingle, who spoke at the SMA Summit in Boston this week. Vitality leverages health data from wearable technology to dynamically adjust health insurance premiums.
“There is an enormous opportunity here to create value for customers now that we have all this data,” Tingle said. “We can draw correlations between exercise and healthy eating with [user] outcomes.”
In the spring, John Hancock extended Vitality to include individuals ages 71 to 90. It also added a NutriSavings app to reward customers with instant discounts at 12,000 grocery stores for purchasing healthy foods.
The Boston-based company now interacts with customers an average 21 times a month, Tingle said. Communications range from rewards claims to customers sending information on meals, daily steps and workouts. In order to further distribute Vitality, the life insurer has also begun selling the product directly to customers, rather than relying solely on agents.
“For 150 years, we issued people policies and hoped they lived long, healthy lives. But we did nothing to help them live that life,” said Tingle. “We have a totally different relationship with these customers than others in our past.”
John Hancock is currently working to underwrite business faster through its SmartProtect Term platform. It is John Hancock’s first attempt to write business without the use of medical tests. SmartProtect, launched in May, offers customers new policies in three to five days using seven simple questions online, Tingle said.
