Lifestyle

Our industry increasingly acknowledges the role people can take in protecting themselves through exercise, good diet and more. This applies, generally, both to those with no known health conditions and those who have a pre-existing condition. Inactive people have an increased risk of, for example, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity and cancer. Excess weight impacts almost every aspect of health, from reproductive and respiratory function to memory and mood.

Through digital innovation and broader access to new data sets, life and health insurers are now incorporating far more sophisticated approaches to point of sale and ongoing assessment of risk into their business models.

The insurance industry is uniquely placed to play a driving role in shaping the health of policyholders. At Hannover Re Life & Health, we have teamed up with biometrics organisation LifeQ to offer our insurance partners and their customers the ability to take positive steps towards ageing well and living longer.

Backed by medical experts and based on clinically validated research, LifeQ’s app goes beyond the scope of most wearable app-based health solutions to enable users to monitor key health indicators including fitness, activity levels, cardiovascular health and sleep hygiene. It uses data from LifeQ-enabled wearables to detect key physiological changes which might, for example, be indicators of a developing infection or even an underlying cardiovascular condition. By encouraging early preventative action, the tool creates awareness of relative risks, seeking to not only save lives but also enable better future quality of life. For insurers, the potential exists to use the data gleaned to:

With digital data and health expertise playing an ever-expanding role in the life and health insurance sectors, our LifeQ partnership enables a health management capability that insurers can offer to their policyholders.

At Hannover Re, we believe in supporting our business partners to encourage and reward healthy lifestyle practices as much as possible. A pioneer in this space has been in South Africa, where the insurer Discovery Life has been active in Vitality programmes for many decades and continues to drive the concept of shared value.

This insurance company has set up a network of partnerships with supermarkets, fitness studios, airlines, restaurants and many more organisations, enabling customers to, in effect, exchange good lifestyle choices for considerable discounts at partners.

As an example, this could mean that healthy food options in the consumer’s supermarket trolley count towards maintaining free gym membership. It’s a win-win for the insurer, which benefits from lower claims and increased persistency, and also for the end customer, who enjoys better health and substantial savings on expenses (including insurance!). In close cooperation with Hannover Re, this concept has been exported to the UK, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Latin America.