I’m personally not liking the sound of this.
John Hancock, one of the oldest life insurance companies in existence, is doing away with traditional policies. From now on, they will only offer policies that track fitness and health data.
There are two variations for these new policies. The basic Vitality option requires customers to enter their activities into an app or website. But for a 15% discount on premiums, customers can go with an expanded plan that requires health tracking via a wearable fitness device, like a Fitbit. And this isn’t a choice for existing customers; their plans will be transitioned into Vitality plans in 2019.
On the one hand, incentivizing the health of their customers isn’t, in and of itself, a bad thing. On the other hand, it’s not hard to see this becoming punitive to customers that can’t meet set fitness goals due to injury or illness. There’s also the fact that customers will be trading personal data for better service. It just doesn’t strike me as an enviable position.
Source: Engadget
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