John Hancock Offers Apple Watch Series 3 to Vitality Life Insurance Customers for Just $25

[MacRumors]

Life insurance provider John Hancock has announced that new and existing members of its Vitality program can receive an Apple Watch Series 3 with GPS only for an initial payment of just $25 plus tax. Additional fees apply for customers who choose a cellular model or other more expensive models.

The cost of the Apple Watch is actually split up into 24 monthly payments, which can be paid off by walking, running, biking, swimming, or completing various other exercises. Vitality members must earn at least 500 fitness-related Vitality Points per month over two years to avoid owing any of the instalments.

By connecting the Vitality Today app to Apple's Health app and confirming data sharing, customers can earn Vitality Points for Light, Standard, and Advanced Workouts towards the monthly goal. Customers can share steps measured by their iPhone or Apple Watch, as well as active calories from the Apple Watch.

The Vitality program is available with select John Hancock life insurance policies in the United States. The free Apple Watch Series 3 offer will be available starting November 6 everywhere except New York.

John Hancock, owned by Manulife Financial, first started offering Apple Watches to a limited number of members last year. About half of the people who received the device achieved their monthly goals and did not pay for the device, John Hancock senior vice president Brooks Tingle told CNBC.

John Hancock is the first life insurance provider to offer the Apple Watch at a discounted rate to its members. Health insurance provider Aetna offers a similar program to its employees, and may expand it to 23 million customers soon.

Article Link: John Hancock Offers Apple Watch Series 3 to Vitality Life Insurance Customers for Just $25

 

[Plutonius]

It doesn't sound like they are monitoring the vitality points through the watch.

 

[SigEp265]

It doesn't sound like they are monitoring the vitality points through the watch.

It looks like they are now:

By connecting the Vitality Today app to Apple’s Health app and confirming that you would like to share your data, you can earn Vitality Points for Light, Standard and Advanced Workouts. You can share steps measured by your iPhone or Apple Watch as well as active calories from Apple Watch.

 

[ricktat]

It looks like they are now:

By connecting the Vitality Today app to Apple’s Health app and confirming that you would like to share your data, you can earn Vitality Points for Light, Standard and Advanced Workouts. You can share steps measured by your iPhone or Apple Watch as well as active calories from Apple Watch.

Worst case you can just let your dog wear it for a week.

 

[Plutonius]

It looks like they are now:

By connecting the Vitality Today app to Apple’s Health app and confirming that you would like to share your data, you can earn Vitality Points for Light, Standard and Advanced Workouts. You can share steps measured by your iPhone or Apple Watch as well as active calories from Apple Watch.

If you have children, you can lend the watch to them to get your vitality points .

 

[redscull]

This reminds me of the trend these days where car insurance wants to give you a “discount” on premiums if you agree to install a tracking device in your car. You’re sacrificing your privacy and lining their data-driven pocket books for such a small trade.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

I don't really see a downside here. This looks to be shockingly forward thinking for an American insurance company.

 

[SigEp265]

If you have children, you can lend the watch to them to get your vitality points .

We have vitality at work ... I had joked with coworkers about putting my fitbit on my dog lol

 

[Rogifan]

I wish my company did this. And I work for a health insurance company. I’d totally share my watch activity data with them in exchange for a buy down of premiums or deductibles.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Before the watch launched, this is more of how I thought it was going to go: basically motivate someone else to pay for it and/or subsidize it much like free* or $99-$199 cell phone deals. I imagined that maybe some of the rumored health monitors built in might be good enough to get insurance and/or the Gov medicare program to pay for it (or most of it) much like one can watch certain TV channels in the afternoon and find people can get all kinds of stuff- even a motorized cart- for as little as free. For example...

Glucose meters, catheters, various kinds of braces/wraps/stimulators, oxygen makers, mobility devices, and on and on... some of which MUST cost as much as the Watch either outright or given some time for sending replacement supplies over and over.

I actually imagined the catalyst for Watch was some brainstorming session with the prompt: what other technology could we make that can be delivered to the end user for cheap or free while still getting us our full price? And a health-sensor-loaded watch concept was born.

 

[hlfway2anywhere]

This reminds me of the trend these days where car insurance wants to give you a “discount” on premiums if you agree to install a tracking device in your car. You’re sacrificing your privacy and lining their data-driven pocket books for such a small trade.

A "tracking" device that just gives them diagnostic information from the vehicle including speed, time of day, and hard breaking. Oh the horror.

 

[NeilHD]

I think Vitality in the UK started doing this last year. I was considering it, but I knew we were switching away from them shortly afterwards.

 

[Wowereit]

This reminds me of the trend these days where car insurance wants to give you a “discount” on premiums if you agree to install a tracking device in your car. You’re sacrificing your privacy and lining their data-driven pocket books for such a small trade.

You know, sometimes I hate the EU with all it's restrictions.
But in cases like this I'm glad that this will never become standard practice here because it's simply illegal.

 

[nutmac]

Wasn't Aetna supposed to do the same? I read that a small segment of customers received Apple Watch for free, but I have not heard details on when it will be expanded.

 

[ricktat]

A "tracking" device that just gives them diagnostic information from the vehicle including speed, time of day, and hard breaking. Oh the horror.

I am OK with an insurance company reminding me to exercise and giving me an incentive.

I am not OK with Progressive claiming the accident was my fault and increasing my rates because I was doing 2 mph over the speed limit.

 

[Delorean2006]

For me, this sounds like a program I can definitely be interested in, I want the series 3, I hope they offer the SS model due to the sapphire glass, since I workout 5-6 days a week, this program would work well for my lifestyle.

 

[cerote]

A "tracking" device that just gives them diagnostic information from the vehicle including speed, time of day, and hard breaking. Oh the horror.

And any of that info can be used against you if they don’t like it. You can be a great driver and still have issue with each of those but the insurance company doesn’t know what happened. I used to get out of work at 2 am and the number of times a drunk driver has caused a number of these to trigger would cause insurance company to think I was bad driver. And it being 2 am they could suspect me as it.

I am just giving example.

For years for our health insurance if we did these extra things we got discount. I kept saying they will use them against us but coworkers were like yea ok. Took 4 years and now if you don’t meet 3 of the 5 “extra” things you had to pay more.

 

[Delorean2006]

I am OK with an insurance company reminding me to exercise and giving me an incentive.

I am not OK with Progressive claiming the accident was my fault and increasing my rates because I was doing 2 mph over the speed limit.

Geico did something similar to me, I got rear ended, police report even declared it was the other driver's fault and they shot my rates up and blamed the cause of accident on me. I found out Geico likes to do this to make their money back even if the driver wasn't at fault.

 

[bbeagle]

You know, sometimes I hate the EU with all it's restrictions.
But in cases like this I'm glad that this will never become standard practice here because it's simply illegal.

Why?

If the supermarket sold milk for $3/jug, but offered me a free jug of milk if I just tell them the cereal I pour it on, sure!

Why shouldn't the customer be allowed to choose if their private information can be sold for a price? I feel the $3 is more than enough to compensate for them knowing I eat Cap'n Crunch. Someone else might not think so, but why can't there be that option?

 

[mattopotamus]

This reminds me of the trend these days where car insurance wants to give you a “discount” on premiums if you agree to install a tracking device in your car. You’re sacrificing your privacy and lining their data-driven pocket books for such a small trade.

I did that with progressive and saved 30% off my annual premium. It was easily the best decision I have made in terms for car insurance. 30% is anything but a small trade, $750 for two cars every 6 months with full coverage.

 

[tooloud10]

A "tracking" device that just gives them diagnostic information from the vehicle including speed, time of day, and hard breaking. Oh the horror.

Right, it 'just' gives them 100% more data than they had just a few years ago. The camel's nose is under the tent, as they say, and soon they'll take just a few more pieces of data (say, location) and change the billing so that it's unaffordable to not accept their terms when demanding this data.

Certainly others can see the direction this is going, no? The problem with the "but I have nothing to hide" argument is that once they're seeing all of your data and storing it indefinitely, it's trivially easy for them to find all kinds of correlations should something happen down the road. How many times will it take you going 1-2 mph over the speed limit before your insurance company sees you as a 'habitual speeder'? How many days of not closing all your Apple Watch rings will it take before you're labeled as a 'lethargic customer'?

Folks, you're not getting a 'free' Apple Watch so you can dictate iMessages to your friends, they're doing it because they know it will eventually improve their profits.

 

[bearda]

It looks like they are now:

By connecting the Vitality Today app to Apple’s Health app and confirming that you would like to share your data, you can earn Vitality Points for Light, Standard and Advanced Workouts. You can share steps measured by your iPhone or Apple Watch as well as active calories from Apple Watch.

They do. I've had life insurance through John Hancock for a while and used their app with a Fitbit and then my original Apple Watch. They really just use it to track intensity/duration of activity. I don't think their app needs to run on the watch itself at any point (it didn't used to, at least), the app on the phone just pulls activity from the Health vault.

I'm considering signing up for this, as it does add significant benefit to their Vitality program. I'm relatively young, so the first year I tracked everything and got a fairly good activity rating. I ended up saving about $7 on my premiums (for the year) since they were pretty low already and didn't bother doing it from then on. I seem to remember that 500 points is a lot for them if they have to be all fitness related unless they've changed the scale. Going from member you can earn 10/20/30 points per day depending on your activity level, with 30 points being pretty uncommon for me. It doesn't exactly leave a lot of slack, so if you're going to do it it sounds like you need to wear the watch every day and really keep it up. I need to do some napkin math, but if you have a tendency to take day-long flights or long car trips it may take some effort to hit the target.

 

[tooloud10]

I did that with progressive and saved 30% off my annual premium. It was easily the best decision I have made in terms for car insurance. 30% is anything but a small trade, $750 for two cars every 6 months with full coverage.

Sure, that's how it starts. Consider how close we are to this basically being compulsory if it would already cost you about 43% more than you're paying now to avoid it. Soon those not wanting to report their data will be priced out of the market--they just need a few more sheep that care more about saving a few bucks than they do about their privacy and the rest of us won't have a choice.

 

[5105973]

Worst case you can just let your dog wear it for a week.

I was walking my dog a couple of weeks ago on a new longer path. She stopped, rolled over and stuck her feet up in the air and then flattened and refused to move for a solid fifteen minutes. Several people drove by and asked if my dog was dead and if I needed assistance.

I think I’ll just keep my data away from the insurance companies.

 

[vertsix]

actually a fantastic idea and great business model

healthier people = possibly less hospital and medical visits = less payments by them