John Hancock Adds Oura Ring Incentive to Wellness Program

By Allison Bell

News May 18, 2023 at 05:39 PM

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John Hancock is hoping a new accessory will persuade more customers to take up exercising and healthy eating habits.

The Boston-based life insurer has added a discount on the Oura Ring health tracker to the John Hancock Vitality wellness program.

Insureds who have the ring and an active Oura membership can earn extra awards for getting enough sleep, meditating and spending a minimum number of minutes per day striving for mindfulness.

What It Means

John Hancock has found another way to try to engage with life insurance customers and prospects who will do their best to stay alive as long as possible.

The Vitality Program

Discovery, an insurer based in Sandton, in South Africa's Gauteng province, introduced the program in 1997, in an effort to improve the health of people all around the world and lower the cost of insuring them.

John Hancock — a unit of Toronto-based Manulife Financial — began offering the Vitality program in 2015.

The John Hancock version of the program is famous for helping participants buy Apple Watch health-tracking devices, both to give them an incentive to participate and to support their efforts to monitor and improve their health.

The Ring

The Oura health tracking ring offers data streams that are similar to what an Apple Watch device offers but different, using a lightweight device that can go for three days without charging.

In addition to measuring an individual's heart rate, temperature and activity, the ring can measure sleep.

Members of one John Hancock Vitality program tier can get a 10% discount on the $299 Oura device, and members in another tier can get a 15% discount.

Local regulations affect access to the ring: John Hancock notes that the ring discount is not available in Guam, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Puerto Rico or Vermont.

The Oura Ring health tracker. (Image: Oura)

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