About
John Hancock became the first life insurance carrier to offer access to GRAIL's multi-cancer early detection test to customers, a significant milestone for our industry in shifting the focus of traditional life insurance by expanding our focus beyond death benefits to also address living longer, healthier, better lives. Within months of a successful pilot program, John Hancock expanded access to the Galleri test to all eligible customers, while exploring other potential expansions for the future.
Innovation presentation
In September 2022, John Hancock became the first life insurance carrier to make Galleri, an innovative multi-cancer early detection test from the healthcare-technology company GRAIL, available to a pilot group of customers. Galleri uses a simple blood draw to screen for more than 50 types of cancer, most of which lack recommended screening tests. It can also help determine where in the body cancer may be located and then guide diagnostic follow up.
The pilot was available to a group of approximately 8,000 customers participating in the John Hancock Vitality Program, which combines life insurance with a technology-enabled program that offers education, support, incentives, and rewards designed to help and encourage customers to live healthier lives. John Hancock Vitality is available with the company’s life insurance policies and covers a broad spectrum of activities — including exercise, nutrition, sleep and mindfulness — rewarding customers for the steps they take to stay healthy.
This groundbreaking collaboration with GRAIL was introduced to our top distribution partners during John Hancock’s Insurance Summit last June, during which we shared a video message from Josh Ofman, President and Chief Medical Officer at GRAIL. The pilot was also previewed internally at our June town hall event, where John Hancock’s more than 3,000 employees were invited to tune in virtually and in person. As a fast-follow cascade of the September announcement, GRAIL and John Hancock teamed up for an on-site activation at the 2022 InsureTech Connect conference that took place in Las Vegas. Brooks Tingle, President and CEO of John Hancock, joined GRAIL on the main stage for a keynote address, and GRAIL held an on-site blood test activation at the conference throughout the day.
We saw successful customer uptake during the pilot, which exceeded our expectations in terms of the number of tests requested, validating our hypothesis that our customers want access to this level of insight into their health. Based on these encouraging results, John Hancock expanded access to the Galleri test to eligible life insurance customers participating in the John Hancock Vitality Program in February 2023.
The expansion is built on our powerful position in the industry and ability to bring together carriers, distributors, reinsurers, and innovative technology partners. For John Hancock, it marks another major progress point against our mission to help customers live longer, healthier, better lives. In making this breakthrough screening technology available, we are empowering customers to take proactive steps to better understand and make more informed choices about their health.
It was always our intention to grow beyond the pilot phase and the expansion enabled this vision to come to life, while allowing for other potential expansions for the future. Today, we continue to explore deeper integration into the Vitality platform and look to expand the partnership over time to include a focus on cancer education, screening, and detection.
Uniqueness of the project
Historically, our industry has occupied the role of paying claims to provide financial security and peace of mind. While this is important work, we knew that we could and should do more, by actively engaging customers with the goal of improving their health outcomes and embracing shared value.
This belief is the inspiration behind John Hancock Vitality, launched in 2015, and the reason why we work with some of the world’s leading brands and most innovative tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google to continuously enhance the Vitality program to offer the latest in rewards and technology to support customers’ health objectives. The Galleri test is the newest feature to be added to the program for customers and another major first for the industry. By partnering with GRAIL and helping customers detect cancer earlier, we’ve taken a large stride to demonstrate what’s possible when life insurers genuinely care about their customers’ health and prioritize innovation.
With this approach, everyone benefits: Promoting better health helps customers and communities become more resilient, prevent disease, and even lower healthcare costs. When customers live longer, healthier, and better lives, life insurers collect premiums over a longer period, creating shareholder value and growing our business. In short, creating shared value means our customers are healthier, our business is stronger, and society is better off. This is a concept we believe in so fundamentally that it is now a cornerstone of how we do business.
The decision to offer the Galleri test to customers reflects this commitment and builds on our existing business model that incentivizes healthy actions by rewarding customers for the everyday steps they take to stay healthy, including proactive measures like cancer screenings. We believe there is a critical need to expand awareness of and access to groundbreaking technologies like the Galleri test that promote such healthy behaviors. After all, we’ve seen the direct impacts that encouraging healthy behaviors can have, with 80% of John Hancock Vitality PLUS participants reporting similar or better overall health year over year.
Based on these achievements, John Hancock is shifting the whole life insurance dynamic from focusing only on death to also focusing on living, embracing our role as guardians of the unique value of life. It’s an example we hope will inspire others in the financial services to take a similar approach where everyone stands to benefit.
