LifeReturns® digital health and fitness screening Qorus-NTT DATA Innovation in Insurance Awards 2026

Concept and objectives

LifeReturns® is a mobile-first digital health and fitness screening solution that enables real-time, personalised life insurance pricing using key biometric measures and insights captured through a smartphone camera. The objective is to remove friction from underwriting, improve risk selection, increase engagement with wellness benefits, and expand access to preferred premiums without traditional medical tests across multiple benefits, including life, disability and critical illness cover.

Reasons behind

The South African life insurance market remains heavily dependent on face-to-face intermediaries and in-person medical assessments. While wellness behavioural model-based pricing has in the past offered meaningful premium benefits to clients, the uptake has been limited due to the inconvenience of collecting and validating health data via logistically lengthy traditional measures such as nurse and biokinetics visits. LifeReturns® was developed to modernise the onboarding and annual reassment processes, whilst reducing adviser and client friction, and unlock the full value of wellness-linked insurance.

State of Competition

Most wellness and underwriting solutions still rely on physical medical tests, wearable devices, or manual data submissions. LifeReturns® differentiates itself through a world-first verified, fully health vitals resting and digital fitness assessment using remote photoplethysmography (rPPG), requiring no additional devices, wearables, or in-person visits, and delivering results in minutes. Sources of inspiration

The solution was inspired by advances in mobile health biomarkers, AI-driven risk modelling, and increasing customer expectations for fast, digital, self-service experiences, combined with Momentum’s strategic focus on financial wellness and inclusive insurance.

Departments involved

Product, Underwriting, Actuarial, Digital, Technology, Data Science, Compliance, Distribution, and Marketing teams worked collaboratively, supported by external world renowned biometric, biomarker and technology partners.

Main results so far

LifeReturns® screens approximately 40 000 clients annually, improves new business conversion threefold (~50% new business conversion rate), enables significant time savings for clients, supports R300 million in retained premium discounts, and has materially reduced the cost of managing the LifeReturns® proposition.