Income protection insurers promote healthier lifestyles

Analysis by Defaqto reveals an increasing trend for income protection (IP) insurers to actively encourage their policyholders to adopt a healthier lifestyle by offering various health and wellbeing service related promotions.

Ben Heffer, Insight Analyst for Protection at Defaqto said: "The provision of health and wellbeing services for policyholders by a number of insurers is a welcome move to engage with the customer and encourage them to lead a healthier lifestyle. An accurate assessment of current health and an understanding of how lifestyle affects future health risks are an important factor in remaining healthy. This has clear benefits for the policyholder: not only in terms of the peace of mind provided by the protection policy but also, as a result of adopting a healthier lifestyle, less likelihood of actually suffering an illness or incapacity."

Mr Heffer added: "In reality this represents a potential win-win scenario for the insurer as well, because, with a healthier client base the incidence of claims should reduce."

The initiatives available include:-

Aviva Health UK Limited offer Get Active, which provides discounted health club membership for IP customers.

BUPA have an initiative running from 18th August until 17th October, whereby both their new IP customer and the introducing independent financial adviser get a free health assessment.

LV='s Healthy Steps incorporates the excellent RoadtoHealth programme, which helps people understand their current state of health, understand how healthy they could be and how to make the necessary changes to achieve it.

PruProtect's Vitality programme has the same overall benefit as RoadtoHealth, but rewards members that take part in the programme with premium discounts in addition to discounts with their Vitality partners. This proves that insurers also benefit from having a healthier book of policyholders.

Unum's Lifeworks is a comprehensive interactive website which offering detailed health and wellbeing information for policyholders to help them make better choices.