Manulife, Alphabet Venture Launch Insurance Partnership for Diabetics
October 28 2019 - 3:29PM
Dow Jones News
By Leslie Scism
Manulife Financial Corp.'s John Hancock unit will market life
insurance to Americans with diabetes that includes a
behavior-change program and virtual clinic, in an effort to boost
sales by making life-insurance products more user-friendly.
Those services, announced today, will be provided through Onduo,
a joint venture under way since 2017 between Alphabet Inc. unit
Verily and French pharmaceutical group Sanofi SA. Alphabet is the
parent of Google.
Approximately 30 million Americans have diabetes, according to
the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People with
the disease can pay between 50% more to triple what healthy people
pay for life insurance, insurance executives say.
Hancock's partnership aims to tap this market in an effort to
rev up sales. Individual life-insurance policy sales have fallen
about 45% industrywide since the mid-1980s, to flatten out at about
9.6 million policies annually in recent years, according to Limra,
an industry-funded research firm.
The slide occurred as mutual funds and 401(k) savings programs
proliferated. Today, many Americans worry more about outliving
their savings than dying prematurely, executives say.
"We are selling a product that no one gets excited about
owning," said Brooks Tingle, chief executive of John Hancock's
life-insurance business. He said the Onduo partnership "is all
about being meaningful while the policyholder is living" -- not
simply paying a death benefit.
Onduo uses a smartphone app to link people with Type 2 diabetes
to medical professionals, dietitians and counselors. It provides
"coaches" to help participants set and meet health goals and offers
text messaging, food photo logs and glucose tracking. The program
also provides videoconferencing with doctors.
Healthy lifestyles and good medical care are widely credited
with helping diabetics improve their health, though it remains to
be seen how Onduo's emphasis on care through smartphones will add
to the mix.
The Boston-based Hancock has offered financial rewards to
policyholders who hit fitness and health milestones since 2015.
Diabetics who buy Hancock's new "Aspire" policies also will be
eligible for such rewards, which are tied to activities including
exercise, healthy grocery purchases and meditation, Mr. Tingle
said.
Onduo will keep health data collected from the Hancock customers
and won't sell or disclose it to other parties, beyond confirming
people's usage in general terms for the rewards, the insurer
said.
Many life insurers do insure diabetics, though guidelines differ
across companies, said Nicholas Mancuso, a manager at
Policygenius.com, a site for consumers to learn about products and
comparison shop.
A healthy 30-year-old male can pay $26 to $55 a month for a
$750,000 term-life policy that lasts 20 years, while premiums for a
30-year-old Type 2 diabetic with a controlled condition and no
complications can range from $52 to $124 a month for the same
policy, according to Policygenius.
Insurers address health status through the underwriting process.
Underwriters typically study an applicant's family medical history,
as well as personal medical records and prescriptions, and conduct
a medical exam, which includes analysis of blood and urine
samples.
Under conventional practice, insurers don't know if -- five or
10 years past the initial underwriting -- a diabetic policyholder
has made strides in controlling the disease, or deteriorated in
health, Mr. Tingle noted. At Hancock, Aspire policyholders will be
eligible for discounts of as much as 25% annually if they achieve
health goals.
"We think people taking steps to manage their diabetes are
probably paying too much for life insurance" over time, Mr. Tingle
said.
Write to Leslie Scism at leslie.scism@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 28, 2019 15:14 ET (19:14 GMT)
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