*By Conor White*
John Hancock Insurance wants its customers living long, healthy lives, but until now the company's "Vitality" program had been neglecting an important part of that formula.
"Who should care more about you living a long healthy life than your life insurance company?" asked Brooks Tingle, president and CEO of John Hancock Insurance. "So when we came out with the program, it really started by emphasizing physical activity, then we added some nutritional elements, preventative screenings, but we realized we were missing a really important pillar, which is mental health."
To that end, John Hancock Vitality life insurance is introducing "HealthyMind", a new initiative encouraging customers to improve their mental health. In an interview Monday on Cheddar, Tingle explained the company's approach.
"We're starting, really, with what we call 'mindfulness'," said Tingle, "with meditation being the best example of that. We're also offering incentives and rewards for a good night's sleep."
Smartphone apps and wearable devices will integrate with "HealthyMind" so users can keep track of their statistics and vitals. The service also includes a free one-year subscription to Headspace, a digital service providing guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training. "HealthyMind" is being rolled out after repeated requests from customers, said Tingle.
"We have a lot of Vitality customers now," he said. "We've been offering this for three years now, and we regularly survey our customers to ask what's missing, what would you like to see added, and meditation support was actually the No. 1 request."
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/signing-off-on-healthier-customers).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
