Insurers set to use health data to set premiums

The insurance industry is just a step away from developing tailor-made insurance premiums from health data received from wearable devices, according to a report in the Japan Times.

Life insurers are developing products that offer bigger discounts to healthy policyholders with less risk. In some products, insurers set premium levels that take into account the results of an applicant’s health checkup.

In order to forecast vulnerability to diseases more precisely, insurers need a range of data, including on sleep, exercise and diet. The problem, however, has been how to collect the data.

Since November 2016, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Himawari Life Insurance Inc. has distributed Fitbit wearable devices to policyholders to collect information on customer health. Using the data, along with the results of health checkups, the company is working to identify causal relationships between diseases and particular lifestyle habits in order to develop new insurance products.

FiNC Inc., an information technology firm, is among a number of companies that collect health data via a mobile phone application. It analyses the data using artificial intelligence and proposes lifestyle improvements to customers.