'In a rapidly changing world, we must continue moving forward'

As we move into 2025, I see huge opportunities for our industry, not just to grow the health and protection market, but to truly make a difference to the lives of our clients and wider society.

It’s clear we live in an age of change, with a multitude of economic, health and environmental challenges, while advancements around A.I, data and technology provide our industry a great deal of untapped potential.

Indeed, at Vitality, we’ve been close to the debates around many of these issues in recent years – from hosting the UN at our offices in support of their global Principles for Sustainable Insurance initiative in 2023 to providing valuable data and insights for last year’s Times Health Summit on health and social care. Just this month, we also launched our 10 Years of Britain’s Healthiest Workplace research exploring a decade of UK productivity data.

Against this backdrop, it is clear is that our industry has been given the opportunity to evolve. Not just so it can better meet the needs of clients in a rapidly changing world - through the products and services we offer, and the ways we engage, communicate and deliver value to consumers – but also to meet the ever-growing demands of market regulation today.

You’ll see our ongoing commitment to this demonstrated in our upcoming Vitality Launch 2025, which I believe will be a game-changer, for our members and for advisers. I couldn’t be more excited.

In 2025, I see the lens of the healthcare world turning towards health improvement and prevention. The government is laser focused on improvements that could be made across the board and new innovations are making this ever more achievable.

At Vitality, from the very beginning, we’ve focused on engaging our members in improving their health and wellbeing through their insurance plan. We continue to innovate to help our members both get healthier and stay healthier in the long term through sustainable healthy habit formation.

This is true shared value in action – for members, insurers, employers and society as a whole – and I believe this will become ever more prominent within our industry and beyond.

In 2025, I see tremendous growth in clients actively seeking financial planning advice. With the uncertain economic environment and the renewed focus of Consumer Duty, the need for advice has never been greater. My prediction is this will lead to growth in Income Protection Cover and other comprehensive forms of protection, alongside an increasing need for IHT planning.

At Vitality, we will continue to innovate to ensure that clients are motivated to become healthier with tangible wellness benefits. We have the largest distribution team in the UK market which positions us well to continue to educate advisers around the benefits of getting a wellness engaged client base, while ensuring that they receive the most comprehensive cover possible at a time they need it most.

Sustainability will continue to accelerate as a major trend in society. We’re experiencing a marked increase in the number of suppliers, partners and clients seeking sustainability credentials. The regulator has already put pressure on financial institutions to increase their transparency around modern slavery, gender pay gaps, and more recently, climate related risks. You may have noticed the impact of the regulators ESG investment labels which came into force recently.

For the life and health industry there is a strong intersect between climate change and the impact on health. In the words of Dr Tedros, “the climate crisis is also a health crisis”. The effects of climate change and nature loss are expected to have adverse effects on human health if they’re not mitigated. This will lead to an impact on health and life insurance. For example, 70% of cancer drugs are reliant on nature. We all need to take action and it starts with awareness to help drive behaviour change.