An Annuity Could Help Your Client Live Longer

What You Need to Know

EquiTrust added a wellness program aimed at annuity holders with long-term care benefits.
Life and health customers have had access to wellness programs for years.
One matter to consider is effectiveness. Another is data hygiene.

Some annuities come with living benefits that protect clients against outliving their income.

EquiTrust’s Bridge annuity comes with a different kind of living benefit: It could make clients live longer.

The Des Moines, Iowa-based company recently introduced a non-variable indexed annuity with a built-in long-term care rider and a built-in wellness program powered by Assured Allies, a Boston-based startup that has raised $65 million in investor funding — including $42.5 million that arrived in early March, as higher interest rates were killing banks and starving other capital-hungry startups.

For advisors, the combination of wellness programs with annuities raises questions about whether a wellness program bundled into an annuity is the sprig of parsley, the potato or, possibly, the meat.

What It Means

In addition to being a friendly ear, a family counselor, a restaurant guide and, when you get a chance, a provider of financial advice, you might find yourself becoming a life extension coach.

Wellness

For decades, health insurers have offered wellness programs that help participants eat better, exercise more and get the recommended preventive and routine care.

John Hancock pushed interest in wellness to a new level in 2015, when it began to work with Vitality, an arm of Discovery Ltd., to build a wellness incentive program into its life insurance policies.

The EquiTrust program relies on technology Assured Allies has developed to deliver services to older people, track the users’ health and see what interventions worked.