Through patience and perseverance, RGA's innovative partnership with Road To Health Group transformed the startup's business into a global success story, unlocking new digital health products and positioning RGA as an expert in using technology to reduce risks and drive growth.
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In one sense, James Dyson was a failure. Fired from his job at a manufacturing company in 1979, he had time to think about vacuums – a lot of time.
This wasn’t a new thought for Dyson. By the time he produced a working prototype, he had created 5,126 failed versions of a bagless vacuum that didn’t lose suction,1 remortgaged his home several times, and sunk the equivalent of $600,000 of his own money into the venture.2 And still UK and US manufacturers wanted nothing to do with it.3 Dyson’s bagless vacuum wouldn’t hit the market until 1993.4
In 2023, Dyson Ltd. reported revenues of more than $9 billion.5
Innovation takes patience, perseverance, and adaptability, whether you are creating the world’s first bagless vacuum or partnerships for new insurance products. Such has been RGA’s experience in optimizing business value for RGA and our partners at the intersection of reinsurance, technology, and investments.
This article examines the unexpectedly long, somewhat winding, and even bumpy road toward success in RGA’s partnership with Road To Health Group (RTHG). It serves as an example of what is necessary to find that success – and the innovations that flow from it.
Today, RTHG is the developer and operator of REACHhealth, a digital health scoring, planning, and coaching service available via a white label platform and wearables data feed as a direct-to-consumer and B2B technology stack.
But that is not how it started out.
When RGA started looking at fast-emerging technologies coming into play in finance nearly a decade ago – the so-called fintech revolution – RTHG was struggling to find its footing in a crowded market. Its biggest source of revenue at the time came from wellness kiosks in private health clubs.
RGA saw RTHG as a viable inorganic growth partner and first invested in 2015. In fact, it was one of RGA’s first technology investments of the fintech era. RTHG has always had an impressive digital health risk assessment tool, underpinned by a clinically validated and proprietary algorithm designed to help people understand their risk of developing certain diseases.
What RTHG did not have was a viable business model.
Its attempt at direct-to-consumer sales failed, and the company had to find smarter ways to deploy their technology. RTHG sold its wellness management for gym memberships to focus exclusively on its health scoring tool.
Ten years after the partnership was formed, technological innovation remains core to RGA’s business. RGA Ventures and Partnerships collaborates with internal teams to find technology partners to reduce biometric risk and deliver operational efficiencies.
Today, the Ventures and Partnerships team tracks more than 150 technology companies each month, seeking potential partners for RGA and its clients, and has made several investments across the globe.
RTHG leverages its REACHhealth platform to deliver connected wellness solutions worldwide. The company has successfully implemented its products in major businesses across the UK, South Africa, UAE, and Australia, demonstrating its ability to operate at scale, with further market expansion on the horizon.
By working through challenges and finding a business model that works – an enterprise-grade platform-as-a-service model – RTHG leverages state-of-the-art technology combined with RGA’s behavioral science expertise to reach more than two million consumers, with plans to grow to more than 10 million by the end of 2026.
The partnership has created new business opportunities for both companies, enabling them to serve more people. Here are four examples:
South Africa’s second-largest bank and a key RGA life insurance client wanted to design a wellness journey for its customers; RGA introduced them to RTHG. This not only helped strengthen RGA’s relationships with its client but also gave RGA a role on the implementation team that will launch a smart link between the bank’s engagement model and insurance offerings.
A joint RGA and RTHG partnership with a major UK retailer is on the horizon. The company was planning a new life insurance offering and approached RGA. RGA was attracted to the opportunity based on the retailer’s large customer base and strategic priorities and turned to RTGH because its product complemented RGA’s vision for the proposition. RGA was selected as the preferred reinsurance partner, in no small part due to RTHG’s involvement. A new custom product with dynamic wellness pricing incentives is scheduled to launch in 2025.
A similar opportunity presented itself with a major US carrier in 2024. While the carrier had an incumbent supporting its wellness offering, they looked to the market for a new, fresh approach and came across RTHG. As with the UK retailer, the carrier was drawn to RTHG’s ability to bring immediate value, as well as their growing track record. When they learned of RTHG’s partnership with RGA, one of the carrier’s own reinsurers, they were eager to partner with RTHG.
Health Ecosystem Integrating Digital Innovations (Heidi) is a technology ecosystem developed by RGA and RTHG for its medical insurance offering. It serves as the patient and provider interface for customers engaging with insurance carriers in the UAE. Heidi’s single-source data footprint links all third-party health services data into a customer engagement platform called Aspire to put people on the path to better health.
Partnerships between early-stage technology companies and big corporations are never easy. It takes dedication to the common goal and a strong cultural fit. True partnership is a state of mind. RGA seeks out and fosters third-party relationships that accelerate innovation, design, and build-out capabilities. To be considered a partner of choice, it is vital to create value at scale, deliver market-leading capabilities, and drive innovation through unique propositions that satisfy unmet needs in the marketplace. RGA seeks partners with aligned interests to help make financial protection accessible to all.
The partnership with RTHG has delivered four key benefits to RGA and its clients:
Even on the day he was fired, James Dyson was not a failure. His was a success story in incubation. Innovation takes patience. Innovation takes perseverance. Innovation takes adaptability.
Just like Dyson – who created a business empire that thrives to this day – the partnership between RGA and RTHG grew from the lessons learned through those three attributes. In applying them, RGA and RTHG provide an example of how to unlock success in partnership with early-stage technology businesses.
There are challenges, yes, but the benefits are worth it.
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