A View from the Top with Herschel Mayers, chief executive of Vitality

The life insurance boss on how his company’s healthy incentive-based policies are helping the UK economy

Mayers sees insurance as being about keeping fit and well and living longer (Vitality)

I like the lazy dachshund. Averse to exercise. You see him on the Vitality posters on the Underground. It’s a clever advertising ploy because the point is to get you to do more exercise. And the surprising thing – if you look more closely – is it’s all about insurance.

It used to be you bought life or health insurance, stuck the paperwork in a drawer, and then forgot about it, until you got ill or they called for the priest. That has all changed – as Herschel Mayers, CEO of Vitality, explained to me.

Born in Zimbabwe, he was brought up in Johannesburg, and divides his time between South Africa and London. After a few years with Liberty, Mayers co-founded Discovery Life, now the largest insurer in South Africa. He joined forces with Prudential in 2014 to set up Vitality. Now 58, he trained as an actuary, so he’s good at mathematics and statistics and probabilities and improbabilities. But stick with me here, because he is also good at making it simple.