Discovery: insurance that bridges the gap between intent and action

Discovery is an insurance company that started in South Africa and now is present in seven markets across the world. Their transformative promise is to incentivize people to live healthier. This is the company's 'north star'. What is so interesting is how they've been successful at bridging that purpose gap between intent and action. I think that this is probably something that you can recognize from your own life as well, how difficult it is to live a healthier life.

What they've done is they've created a program called Vitality. It's like a normal reward program, but they just reward and incentivize the customers for choosing the right and healthy behavior. So let's say you buy fruits and vegetables, or let's say you go to the gym, and you get rewarded. They have a business case to prove that it does work because they've done a survey together with Apple Health (the little app in your Apple iPhone that tracks your day-to-day exercise). This is a study that they have done with more than 200,000 people across the seven markets. The interesting thing is that the people who take part in the Vitality program exercise 5.2 days more per month. By taking this approach they have been successful at nudging their consumers to live more healthily. As I said, I've always been curious about proving the business case or purpose, and there they have it. Because as a health insurance company, if your customers are living healthier lives, they live longer and they have fewer health problems. The business case is pretty clear, they have to pay out less in premiums.