Insurance company offers rebates for healthy lifestyle – Radio Canada International

People method yoga on the west yard of Parliament Hill in Ottawa July 16, 2014.
Photo Credit: Blair Gable / Reuters

A Canadian insurance company is set to offer a brand-new insurance regimen that rewards policy holders for healthy and balanced lifestyle options such as routine exercise, obtaining an annual healthiness screening or a flu shot.

Ontario-based insurance giant Manulife is partnering along with Vitality Group to bring the regimen to Canada, after rolling out similar units in sections of Africa, Asia and the United States.

“Manulife is moving away from being a traditional insurance company to one that actively partners along with customers to insight them achieve overall well-being, including bodily and financial health,” Manulife Canada’s CEO Marianne Harrison said.

The company said sign-up process is similar to numerous insurance policies, in that applicants take an online test to identify their degree of overall healthiness then are offered a premium.

Policy holders that enroll in the regimen receive personalized healthiness targets and Can easily log their tasks using online and automated tools, which are integrated along with the current wearable fitness-tracking technology such as Fitbit, Manulife said.

They start accumulating points each time they finish health-related activities.

The a lot more engaged they are along with the regimen and involved in living a healthier lifestyle, the a lot more points they Can easily accumulate to earn others rewards and discounts from leading retailers, the company said in a release.

“We’ve found that as soon as People purchase an integrated life insurance product and participate in the program, they are inspired to set targets and take steps to healthy and balanced living,” Vitality CEO Alan Pollard said in a statement.

Officials at the Office of Canada’s Privacy Commissioner said while they have actually not studied the insurance product offered by Manulife, they would certainly encourage People to carefully think about the potential implications prior to sharing any type of personal write-up – especially sensitive information.

“In the age of big data, we understand that a lot more and a lot more services are being offered in exchange for personal information,” said a statement by the office. “In fact, we identified the economics of personal write-up and the physique as write-up as vital themes throughout a priority setting exercise that culminated in June.”

Over the next 5 years, the office will certainly be delving deeper in to matters related to the commoditization of personal write-up and the brand-new business models being produced about the use of big data, the Internet of points and mobile technologies.

“Similarly, we will certainly be looking in to the mounting privacy comes to related to highly sensitive health, genetic and biometric write-up that is being used by organizations and governments in all of sorts of brand-new ways,” said the statement. “In the past, we have actually raised questions concerning somewhat related issues, for instance the use of genetic test outcomes by insurance companies.”