John Hancock Will Include Fitness Tracking In All Life Insurance Policies (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: John Hancock, one of the oldest and largest North American life insurers, will stop underwriting traditional life insurance and instead sell only interactive policies that track fitness and health data through wearable devices and smartphones, the company said on Wednesday. The move by the 156-year-old insurer, owned by Canada's Manulife Financial, marks a major shift for the company, which unveiled its first interactive life insurance policy in 2015. It is now applying the model across all of its life coverage. Policyholders score premium discounts for hitting exercise targets tracked on wearable devices such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch and get gift cards for retail stores and other perks by logging their workouts and healthy food purchases in an app. In theory, everybody wins, as policyholders are incentivized to adopt healthy habits and insurance companies collect more premiums and pay less in claims if customers live longer.

Comments

And so it begins

[YrWrstNtmr]

Not fit enough, eat too much red meat, drive too fast....sucks to be you.

tracked on wearable devices such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch
Yeah, THAT will go over well with my employer. Specifically, no smart watches in the building. AT all, ever.

Re:And so it begins

[taustin]

I take responsibility for my life by refusing to use tracking devices that communicate with companies that show no evidence of being able to spelldata security, much less actually implement it.

Particularly since, which the insurance company is bound by HIPPA laws, Fitbit is not.

This will last until the first breach, which is inevitable.

I just don't know about this

[OutOnARock]

Its like the auto insurance companies wanting to monitor everything I do in my car.

These should be things that one has to "opt-in" for.

I don't want the "discount" for being on an electronic leash......

There is just something about this that rubs me the wrong way.

An example of stupid

[judoguy]

This is so dumb. A tracker would show me as terribly inactive because I can't wear one when I work out. I train and compete in judo and bjj. Hard training, fantastic exercise but you can't wear a damn bracelet or sensor while doing this.

A fitness tracker, like the stupid BMI calculation, would show me as layabout. Every actual measure of my health shows me to be in great health. I'm 65 and compete successfully at a world level in judo and bjj for my age. This is the classic case of how vs what. Look at the actual thing to be measured, not a poorly defined process that tries to look at how something MIGHT be measured. .

Re:Progressive Snapshot Hacks

[omnichad]

They're way more likely to pay the claim and drop you

Yeah...that won't work for the life insurance ones. Everyone gets dropped after the first claim.