Why are major life insurance companies suddenly desperate to give their customers free fitness trackers?

A Tracker Can Turn a Policy Into an Ongoing Relationship

Life insurance is usually bought for a distant, difficult-to-picture event: a payout to survivors after the policyholder dies. A fitness tracker changes that dynamic. It gives an insurer a reason to interact with a customer every day, through step counts, activity goals, reminders, or rewards.

That contact can help keep a policy visible and make the company feel less like a bill that arrives once a month. For insurers, that matters: customers who stay with a policy are more valuable than customers who cancel and buy coverage elsewhere. A device that encourages regular participation can therefore serve as a retention tool as well as a health perk.

The Business Case Is About Risk—and Incentives

Life insurers price coverage around the chance that they will have to pay a claim, using information such as age and health. More physical activity may support better health over time, but a tracker cannot tell an insurer exactly how long someone will live. It records limited signals—often movement, not the full picture of a person’s health or circumstances.

The more immediate economic value may come from incentives. A program can reward customers for meeting activity targets or completing health-related tasks. Those rewards give people a reason to engage, while giving the insurer more opportunities to maintain the relationship and encourage habits that could benefit health. The company is betting that those gains justify the cost of devices and rewards; a “free” tracker is a business expense, not a gift without a purpose.

The Tradeoff Is Participation Versus Privacy

These programs work best for insurers when customers keep using them. But participation also asks customers to share activity information, sometimes through connected apps or services. The important distinction is what data a program collects, how it is used, and whether participation affects a customer’s price or eligibility. Those details can vary by policy and program, so the device alone does not reveal the terms.

The tracker’s value is less that it can predict an individual’s future than that it can make a long-term insurance product feel immediate—and give both sides a reason to stay engaged before a claim ever occurs.