{"id":8154,"date":"2026-06-19T19:55:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=8154"},"modified":"2026-06-19T19:55:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:55:21","slug":"the-frontrunner-in-the-longevity-revolution-was-born-during-the-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=8154","title":{"rendered":"The frontrunner in the longevity revolution was born during the Civil War\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Few things capture Brooks Tingle\u2019s approach to being a longevity warrior like watching him walk on stage in a dark suit jacket and custom Air Force 1 sneakers earlier this month. The CEO of John Hancock was there to kick off the company\u2019s 3rd annual \u201cLonger. Healthier. Better\u201d symposium for brokers, dispensing the kind of common sense one might expect from someone who\u2019s spent the bulk of his career at a life insurer founded in Boston 164 years ago. Not for him the magic elixirs and fads of his biohacking brethren. Tingle, 60, is a man who thinks about actuarial data and probabilities, about how to transform a largely transactional business that\u2019s betting on your lifespan into a partner in boosting your health span, or how long you\u2019ll live well. \u201cOf course it\u2019s good for the business,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019m also passionate about this stuff.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Longevity is a hot topic\u00a0as the\u00a0country\u00a0is getting older.\u00a0The median age is now close to 40, and the percentage of Americans over 65 is projected to grow from 17% today to almost one in four Americans by 2050. One in three will be over 50, a figure that may get higher if immigration slows as the fertility rate of 1.6 births is well below replacement level. Policymakers fret\u00a0about how to pay for it. Some consumers\u00a0are\u00a0moving\u00a0abroad\u00a0or\u00a0delaying\u00a0retirement\u00a0because of it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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But there\u2019s\u00a0opportunity, too.\u00a0With Americans over 55 controlling almost three-quarters of the nation\u2019s wealth, they are investing heavily in trying to live not just longer but better.\u00a0There\u2019s an explosion of new products like NMN supplements,\u00a0spa treatments\u00a0and real or dubious ways for people to\u00a0biohack their way to preserving it. The global biohacking market is expected to\u00a0more than double to $69 billion\u00a0in the next four\u00a0years,\u00a0and entrepreneur Bryan Johnson predicts he can\u00a0make humans immortal\u00a0by 2039.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But most Americans are not fully prepared for a normal lifespan, never mind one that extends to 100 and beyond. As author and longtime longevity pundit Ken Dychtwald noted at the conference in remarks condensed for Fortune<\/em>, \u201cfor the first time in human history, tens of millions of us can reasonably expect to live into our 80s, 90s, and beyond\u2014yet we\u2019ve barely begun to innovate for what those extra decades should look?and feel?like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Longevity Preparedness Index\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Tingle thinks about all of\u00a0this\u00a0a lot. It\u2019s why he just partnered with Joe\u00a0Coughlin, founder\u00a0and director\u00a0of the MIT\u00a0AgeLab, to create\u00a0a\u00a0Longevity Preparedness Index.\u00a0It\u00a0measures people\u2019s readiness for aging against\u00a0eight\u00a0\u201cdomains\u201d\u00a0of strategies that\u00a0have been shown to improve the length and quality of life.\u00a0Taking steps to improve\u00a0health and wealth are just two of them. The other\u00a0areas include\u00a0planning\u00a0a roster of\u00a0activities, building\u00a0social connections,\u00a0creating a care plan,\u00a0picking the right community, finding optimal\u00a0accommodation,\u00a0and\u00a0preparing for tough life transitions.\u00a0In a survey of 1,300 U.S. adults, the average score was 60 out of 100.\u00a0(Click here\u00a0to take the quiz yourself.)\u00a0Americans score especially low\u00a0when it comes to planning\u00a0continuing care, even though 70% are likely to need it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Three<\/div>
Fortune\u2019s Diane Brady, MIT AgeLab Director Joe Coughlin, and John Hancock CEO Brooks Tingle in conversation at the company\u2019s \u201cLonger. Healthier. Better\u201d symposium. <\/figcaption>

Courtesy of John Hancock<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t always control how you age,\u201d says Coughlin, who famously created the AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System) suit that lets people feel what it\u2019s like to navigate the world in an old body. Barring a miracle, most of us won\u2019t be doing power push-ups and racing upstairs in the last years of life. Aspiration and preparation are different. Coughlin points out that having an accessible home and someone to talk to and drive you to appointments are proven factors in determining not just how well you live, but how long. \u201cAsk me if I think death is something that can or should be cured,\u201d said Coughlin, racing by in bright orange pants before answering that existential question. \u201cWe have plenty of evidence on how we\u2019re likely to age.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Added Tingle: \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be just another financial services company that did an annual survey that waves their finger at everyone Americans saying you\u2019re not saving enough for retirement. You need health and wealth but there\u2019s much more to preparing for a long life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the heck am I going to do?\u201d\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Then again, thinking about death is a bummer. A lot of people buy life insurance as protection against the worst, hoping that they\u2019ll never have to use it\u2014or have it pay out after a long and happy life. That\u2019s essentially how John Hancock brokers have sold policies from 1864 to today, where it generated $8.6 billion a year in insurance revenue as a subsidiary of Canada\u2019s Manulife Financial.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how\u00a0every\u00a0life insurer makes\u00a0money\u2014by selling you policies\u00a0in which\u00a0you can afford\u00a0to pay them more than they\u2019ll ever have to pay you.\u00a0It\u2019s a relationship that customers tend to maintain for more than two decades and yet it rarely extends beyond the act of purchasing a policy. As he put it:\u00a0\u201cA lot of these planners tend to talk about a transaction, or to the extent it is planning, it\u2019s around planning around one dimension of what we believe is fulsome preparedness to live a longer, healthier, better life.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tingle\u2019s goal is to\u00a0encourage\u00a0those\u00a0sellers\u00a0to\u00a0become enablers of longevity\u00a0and build deeper (and more profitable) relationships with\u00a0customers\u00a0by giving them\u00a0incentives to\u00a0invest in their own longevity.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0partnered with\u00a0consumer\u00a0health-tech\u00a0companies like Oura and\u00a0Prenuvo, and also featured ClearCardo,\u00a0as well as\u00a0the\u00a0foundation of Damar Hamlin, a Buffalo Bills player who\u00a0had a cardiac arrest during a game three years ago,\u00a0who\u00a0funds CPR training and external\u00a0defibrillators\u00a0in youth sports.\u00a0\u201cIt truly shifted my perspective on life,\u201d Hamlin told\u00a0Tingle during the conference.\u00a0\u201cWe all have our platforms\u2026you have to lead where you are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Tingle, three\u00a0years of\u00a0building out\u00a0a\u00a0platform for\u00a0longevity have\u00a0prompted\u00a0some internal reflections\u00a0on what it means to grow old.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve been at Hancock for 35-plus years now,\u201d he said. \u201cSimple math says there are fewer of those years ahead of me than behind me in terms of this version of my career, and I plan to stay as long as they\u2019ll have me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u00a0have this gift that, frankly, most of our grandparents,\u00a0and their parents\u00a0and\u00a0grandparents, didn\u2019t have, which is decades of life after\u00a0your first act professionally,\u201d he told me. \u201cIf\u00a0I leave at 65, 67,\u00a0and live\u00a0to\u00a087 or 97, I think, \u2018What the heck am I going to do?\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does he have an answer? Not yet.\u00a0But\u00a0he\u2019s living healthier\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m certainly going to be prepared.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

#frontrunner #longevity #revolution #born #Civil #War<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few things capture Brooks Tingle\u2019s approach to being a longevity warrior like watching him walk on stage in a dark suit jacket and custom Air Force 1 sneakers earlier this… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3113,5821,3186,2964,10334,8633,1888,7697,446],"class_list":["post-8154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-250-years-of-innovation","tag-aging","tag-born","tag-civil","tag-frontrunner","tag-longevity","tag-mit","tag-revolution","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}