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John Hancock is betting that life insurance can do more than pay out at the end of life—through an app-based rewards program that turns day-to-day health habits into a points game. The insurer’s Vitality program gives policyholders points for activities such as going to the gym, buying healthy foods, tracking sleep, and getting preventive screenings and check-ups, with the points tied to tangible perks and tier status.
Policyholder Matt Hudack, a financial planner who participates in Vitality, described checking his app as he looks at his progress through the program’s point totals and status tiers. “I’ve already got 5,400 points. I’m silver, almost approaching gold,” Hudack said in an interview, describing incentives that include a REI discount. He also said he enjoys a digital prize wheel feature that becomes available after hitting activity benchmarks, adding: “The spins are fun.”
Vitality’s structure resembles the incentive ladder that airlines use for frequent flyers, with customers moving up through tiers as they build healthier habits over time. As Hudack described, the program encourages repeated engagement by tying progress to gamified rewards that can be accessed through the app when participants meet set activity targets.
John Hancock CEO Brooks Tingle said the program reflects a deliberate shift in how the company thinks about its core business. In remarks in the interview, Tingle said, “We call this the life insurance business,” and argued that the traditional focus had centered on death and preparation for it. He said Vitality “literally” turns that framing around, explaining, “What we’ve done is literally turn that around. This is about living, and living better.”
Tingle also linked the program’s incentives to the company’s business logic, describing the idea that healthier customers may live longer and pay premiums for longer periods. He told NPR that “the longer we’re able to collect and invest the premiums, the more money we make,” and that “You want to live a long, healthy life? It’s good for us, too,” framing the company’s incentives as aligned with customers’ interests.
Cardiologist Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, collaborated with John Hancock on how Vitality would handle dietary incentives. Mozaffarian said the appeal of gamification is not only about the dollar value of a reward, but about making the rewards “fun and exciting and having prizes.” He also argued that people may respond differently when health-related rewards are presented as potential wins rather than fixed cash payments, describing uncertainty as part of what can drive engagement.
Mozaffarian advised the company on structuring food-related incentives, including discounts on fruits and vegetables, and he pointed to research on how financial incentives can promote healthier eating when diet-related disease is widespread. He also suggested the program’s game elements can motivate participants in ways that a straightforward offer of money might not.
In a separate development, Tingle told members of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health in 2025 that Vitality members can show early improvements in health behaviors. NPR reported that Tingle described findings that Vitality members walk twice as many steps daily as the average American, and that about half of members with high blood pressure brought their levels into a healthy range within a year.
Even as Vitality offers discounted access to advanced screening tests such as early detection blood work and MRI scans, external experts say the evidence base is still catching up to the program’s promise. Dr. Samir Sinha, a geriatrician and aging expert at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto, said there is not enough evidence “right now” to say whether these rewards programs will actually produce longer lives and healthier outcomes.
Sinha said the programs could still have value if they succeed at helping people build habits that persist over time, describing the possibility of a “longevity dividend” if healthy behaviors become lifelong. He noted the underlying concept is not entirely new—car insurers have long offered lower rates to drivers whose habits can be tracked—but said bringing that approach into life insurance is still emerging.
For Hudack, Vitality has also changed how he talks about life insurance with clients, offering an opening to discuss health rather than only mortality. He said the program gives him a more uplifting frame, adding that he has one staff member devoted to servicing Vitality clients, and that a daily activity counter resetting to zero on Monday mornings does not discourage him—“It starts all over again this morning,” Hudack said, describing it as a prompt to get going.