Healthy, wealthy and wise: pursuing financial and physical wellbeing

This site is for UK investment professionals only. If you're not an investment professional, please find out more about us at vitality.co.uk.

The ultimate outcome for later life involves having both financial security and the good health to enjoy an active, fulfilling retirement. VitalityInvest is built on an incentive-based concept that can help your clients meet both of these goals.

We’re all living longer

Over the past 100 years, life expectancy at birth has improved at an unprecedented rate. In the UK, the average expected lifespan at birth has been extended by 31 years for males and 29 years for females¹.

Expected lifespans in retirement have also lengthened dramatically. In 1915, if a British man survived to age 65, his life expectancy was a further 10.1 years. Today, men turning 65 can expect to live for a further 18.8 years on average. For women life expectancy at 65 has increased from 11.5 years to 21.1 years.

However, while society may have become experts in extending and sustaining human life, we have not yet addressed the problem of improving the quality of later life. We also now have a far better understanding of how our individual lifestyle choices affect our prospects in later life – not only for living longer but also for improving our ongoing state of health.

Back to basics: it’s about quality of life
All of this has significant implications for how we plan for retirement. The magic formula for success combines living longer, staying healthy and sustaining financial security. We believe we can help deliver these objectives with a new range of long-term savings products that take a holistic lifestyle and financial approach to long-term planning.

"The magic formula for success combines living longer, staying healthy and sustaining financial security."

After all, if we’re living longer, it’s clear we need to save more effectively to maintain our standards of living post-work - or even work longer. But saving in itself isn’t sufficient to achieve our goals. Living a long and healthy life demands that we also take control of our wellbeing.

Managing health and wealth in one place
In order to help your clients understand the impact of their lifestyle choices, Vitality in partnership with Cambridge University and RAND Europe have developed Vitality Age to show how altering certain aspects of our life (for example exercising more or giving up smoking) can influence our expected longevity. Vitality’s innovative approach harnesses the power of technology and big data to customise the calculation to an individual’s specific circumstances.

Understanding our state of health and long-term financial needs is, however, just the first step. How we use this knowledge to prepare for tomorrow is another matter entirely. Up to now, saving for the future and living responsibly have relied predominantly on self-discipline. And in modern society, with its pervasive temptations, sacrificing immediate gratification to prepare for the distant future is arguably more difficult than it has ever been.

VitalityInvest: turning knowledge into action
In order to address these interrelated challenges, Vitality has launched a holistic lifestyle and investment solution that incentivises people to realise a healthier, financially more secure future. The solution is based on Vitality’s shared value model, where both the individual and Vitality benefit from the fruits of a more responsible approach to long-term saving. VitalityInvest employs behavioural nudges to encourage people to start saving earlier, save for longer and manage their income in retirement. And critically, through our Vitality wellness programme, we also enable people to enjoy their old age by helping them arrive there in better health. After all, retirement should be a time for enjoying life to the fullest.

Source
1. ONS, Past and projected data from the period and cohort life tables 2014, England and Wales, 1841 to 2064, 23 March 2017.

For investment professionals only. VitalityInvest is a trading name of Vitality Corporate Services Limited. Vitality Corporate Services Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.