Abstract
Insurance companies are increasingly harnessing self-tracking data to innovate and create new health and life insurance schemes. These schemes are often hailed as social innovations, and a major growth opportunity for the industry. Clients are invited to track and measure their health behaviour, fitness habits and vital functions. The data produced is submitted directly to the insurer and used for risk assessment. Good health and behaviour are rewarded; while poor health and behaviour relegate the insured to a lower ‘health status’. We undertake a discourse analysis of published materials relating to these innovations to identify the cultural and social changes they introduce. We review four categories of publications identified through a focused literature review. These include (a) marketing and PR material (n=41) (b) journalistic articles (n=37), (c) industry publications (n=14), and (d) academic articles (n=25). Based on our analysis, we argue that these innovations introduce a significant imbalance of power between insurance corporations and consumers. Insurance corporations can select their clients, intervene in their behaviour and determine their value. Furthermore, these innovations threaten to change and erode conceptions of solidarity and fairness that underpin collective insurance schemes.
Highlights
Since 2015, a growing number of health insurance companies are collaborating with producers of wearable technology to develop self-tracking health and life insurance schemes (STHLIS)
STHLIS are presented as improving societal health and saving related costs, and as social innovations
(a) Marketing Publications The marketing publications (n=41) include the websites of the providers of STHLIS (n=9) and of wearable technologies (n=4); promotional material relating to STHLIS schemes (n=15), and public relations material (n=13)
Summary
Since 2015, a growing number of health insurance companies are collaborating with producers of wearable technology (i.e. smart watches and fitness trackers) to develop self-tracking health and life insurance schemes (STHLIS). Pioneered in 2015 by the South African company Discovery, these schemes incentivise their users to track data relating to their activities (such as the number of steps taken daily, or hours spent training), and submit this to their insurer for analysis (Kuchler, 2019). This allows insurers to more accurately calculate premium costs and increase profits. These schemes are part of a growing Insurtech industry and are hailed as social innovations The social need they are understood to address is conceived against a background of ageing populations, rising health care costs and exhausted communal care systems (Finn, Schaudel, Schneider and Singhal, 2017). Consultancy firms advise that STHLIS offer vast growth opportunities for private insurers (Singhal et al, 2016)
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