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Go for that run… it might just save your life

By Andrew McCurrie, Actuary and Director of Technical Marketing at Vitality

Published: 02/06/2021

We know exercise is good for us, but I suspect most people don’t know just how good…

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Physical activity reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and breast and colon cancer. It is also an important trigger event for other health-promoting behaviours such as healthy eating and preventive screenings.

Exercise also has positive effects on mental health, delays the onset of dementia, keeps your brain sharp and improves your sleep.

What is even better is that the health improvements from increased physical activity begin immediately and doing just one more session of physical activity per week reduces your risk substantially.

For example, a 40-year-old who starts doing just one physical activity session per week, reduces their risk of being hospitalised in the next year by 13%. For a 60-year-old, this same change in behaviour corresponds to a staggering 40% reduction in the likelihood of them submitting an in-hospital claim1.

The health and life insurance industry has, to a large degree, been about death and illness. Vitality is different – by using the unique capability of insurance to monetise better risk, we are able to incentivise and turn positive behaviours into additional value for members, making it not only healthy for your clients to get active but rewarding as well.

How can wearable technology benefit your client? Find out more.




Sources:
1. Risk of a member claiming in-hospital over the next 12 months using causal inference. A Bayesian Network was used for causal inference and the expected impact of changes in lifestyle behaviours estimated using do-calculus. Models were built on Vitality Life and Health customer data between 2016 and 2020.

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