Want to lower your life insurance premium? You may have to add a few thousand steps to your daily routine, get more sleep and work on your aerobic fitness to get your heart rate down.
And no, just getting in shape through a crash exercise program for your annual physical won't work anymore. As soon as they find a way in, health and life insurers are hoping to monitor your smartwatch for such vital information as your daily step counts, average heart rate, daily sleep duration and minutes of inactivity or vigorous movement.
They're taking a cue from car insurers, many of whom now monitor driving habits through transceivers that plug into your car or through wireless communications devices already installed in many cars.
Those devices let car insurers monitor speed, acceleration, braking and other indicators of your driving habits. Smartwatches offer the same opportunity. They'll be able to add realtime data to existing health records and exam results.
A lower premium, maybe
The reward for all this is the potential of getting a lower rate if your health indicators are good, since that correlates to probable life expectancy. Eventually, it may even be required.
Analytics firm Klarity said its research has found that people who walk at least 7,000 steps per day have significantly lower mortality risk, regardless of their weight, age, smoking status and other traditional risk indicators.
While chipping away at personal privacy, the use of wearable technology could extend the possibility of insuring people previously viewed as high-risk. Of course, it could work the other way too; people who look and act vigorous could be "outed" by their watch and shown to be layabout slugs who are at high risk of an early death or illness.
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