Slava
03-02-2018, 11:56 AM
Well RRSP season is over, and I figured I should have something new at the top of this sub forum! Manulife has a new and innovative insurance product called Vitality. While traditional life insurance sets your price and leaves it as it is, this policy takes into account your ongoing lifestyle and activity.
What happens is that you get a policy, and with this track your activity (steps/workouts/etc.) as well as other health related activities (dental checks, blood tests, flu shots etc.) As you do these things, you earn points which add up to reduce your life insurance premium. Let's face it...it's not altruistic on the part of the insurer as they are paying on fewer life insurance claims, but I'm OK with that!
The Apple watch comes in because Manulife has a deal with Apple, whereby you pay the taxes applicable and the first monthly payment of $17 and get a watch. By being active and amassing points in the program for activity you can have no further payments, or reduce these payments from the $17/month.
You might have a lot of questions about this (I did for sure) so here a couple that came to mind, aside from usual insurance questions:
A) How hard is it to get points? I'm going to say not very. I've had my policy under this plan for about 6 months now and I've found it pretty simple. It has encouraged me to be a little more active and gather points, but you don't need to be an Olympic athlete or anything like that.
B) Is it actually worth it? I can figure out the specifics for you, but in general I think it saves me something like $4500-5000 over the policy term. So I consider that worth it, along with the better mortality risk!
C) What if I bail on this after a little while? The general savings over the first two years make this attractive, because after that time you likely still save compared to a normal policy. I can give you a more specific idea on a personal level as well.
That's a pretty high-level overview of the policy and how they operate. For the most part though, they are just like other life insurance policies and have the same features and benefits, but with this added idea of activity tracking.
What happens is that you get a policy, and with this track your activity (steps/workouts/etc.) as well as other health related activities (dental checks, blood tests, flu shots etc.) As you do these things, you earn points which add up to reduce your life insurance premium. Let's face it...it's not altruistic on the part of the insurer as they are paying on fewer life insurance claims, but I'm OK with that!
The Apple watch comes in because Manulife has a deal with Apple, whereby you pay the taxes applicable and the first monthly payment of $17 and get a watch. By being active and amassing points in the program for activity you can have no further payments, or reduce these payments from the $17/month.
You might have a lot of questions about this (I did for sure) so here a couple that came to mind, aside from usual insurance questions:
A) How hard is it to get points? I'm going to say not very. I've had my policy under this plan for about 6 months now and I've found it pretty simple. It has encouraged me to be a little more active and gather points, but you don't need to be an Olympic athlete or anything like that.
B) Is it actually worth it? I can figure out the specifics for you, but in general I think it saves me something like $4500-5000 over the policy term. So I consider that worth it, along with the better mortality risk!
C) What if I bail on this after a little while? The general savings over the first two years make this attractive, because after that time you likely still save compared to a normal policy. I can give you a more specific idea on a personal level as well.
That's a pretty high-level overview of the policy and how they operate. For the most part though, they are just like other life insurance policies and have the same features and benefits, but with this added idea of activity tracking.