Q & A with Rob Hollingsworth, VP, Head of Distribution, Individual Insurance, Manulife Canada
Getting a COVID-19 vaccine and taking part in everyday healthy activities like taking a walk allow Vitality Program members to earn reward points.iStockPhoto / Getty Images
What motivated Manulife to depart from traditional approaches to life insurance and to innovate with its Vitality Program?
We’ve invested a great deal to transform the life insurance ownership experience from one where consumers get a life insurance policy, tuck it away and don’t think about it again. There is a very practical reason driving our innovation – today, people are thinking about their health in terms of holistic needs; they want solutions that support their physical, mental and financial well-being.
This trend only grew due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the importance of baseline health in ensuring healthier outcomes being one of the earliest and most consistent data points related to the public health crisis.
At Manulife, we believe life insurers are uniquely positioned to respond to these needs by having more meaningful and engaging relationships with our customers. This is the perspective that led us to launch Vitality, which combines life insurance with a technology-enabled program that offers education, support, incentives and rewards designed to help customers live longer, healthier lives.
What does research tell us about why Vitality’s model incentivizes healthier behaviours?
Our “shared value” approach to insurance is grounded in the social science of behavioural economics, offering personalized programs that enable, educate, empower and incentivize customers to live longer, healthier lives, and reward them for the everyday choices they make to achieve that goal. When customers participate in Vitality, they earn points for everyday healthy activities, like taking a walk, visiting the dentist or taking their COVID vaccine. The more points they earn, the greater their potential for rewards.
Rob Hollingsworth, VP, Head of Distribution, Individual Insurance, Manulife CanadaSupplied
We consider insurance to be the ultimate shared-value industry – by helping improve health, extend life and reverse chronic diseases, we can generate economic value in a way that also produces value for society by addressing its challenges.
How has demand for Vitality tracked since its introduction?
Since introducing Vitality in 2016 in Canada, we have seen remarkable and encouraging results from our members. This reaffirms our belief that Vitality is the path to the future for life insurance. Among our Vitality members in Canada, we’ve seen a significant jump in the average number of steps taken compared to the broader population, along with logging millions of healthy activities including walking, swimming and biking, and earning millions of dollars in rewards. All this to say, Vitality is working. These proof points are more reason why we believe Vitality and behavioural-based insurance is the future for life insurance in Canada.
What are the benefits of the program to both employees and employers?
Manulife Group Benefits offers this program to all employees with a Health Benefit plan with Manulife. An employee can download the app and complete a series of questions that helps them learn about their current state of health and what actions they can take to improve their health – but the bonus is that they get rewarded for taking action to improve their health.
For employers, we provide support to drive campaigns that encourage members to participate. Healthier employees are more engaged at work, more productive and experience less absenteeism – which is good for their business.
Advertising feature produced by Randall Anthony Communications. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.