Health wearables in insurance

In September 2018, the US life insurer John Hancock announced that all its policies would from then on come with its interactive program, in which policyholders who share data from their watch or band earn points and discounts. In France, the same mechanism runs into health insurance law. Health wearables in insurance are the watches, bands and apps that measure steps, heart rate or sleep and that the insurer builds into a prevention program: activity challenges, coaching, vouchers, sometimes a premium discount. The US and South African markets use them in life insurance, where medical underwriting and individual pricing are allowed. In France, the solidarity-based, responsible complementary health contract, which carries most of the market thanks to its tax and social treatment, forbids collecting medical information and setting the premium by health status. A discount indexed on step counts would look too much like pricing on a health indicator, so French programs stick to services and rewards that leave the premium untouched. The readings are health data within the meaning of Article 9 of the GDPR, whose processing in practice rests on the policyholder's explicit consent, and storing them raises the question of a certified health data host. Individual protection and mortgage protection insurance leave more room, since medical underwriting is still allowed there, but few insurers put the premium on the line. Practitioners keep one basic reservation: the people who agree to share their steps are often the ones who already walk, and the program recruits a healthier population without showing that it makes it healthier.