The frontrunner in the longevity revolution was born during the Civil War

Few things capture Brooks Tingle’s 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’s 3rd annual “Longer. Healthier. Better” symposium for brokers, dispensing the kind of common sense one might expect from someone who’s 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’s betting on your lifespan into a partner in boosting your health span, or how long you’ll live well. “Of course it’s good for the business,” he says, “but I’m also passionate about this stuff.” Recommended Video Longevity is a hot topic as the country is getting older. The 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 about how to pay for it. Some consumers are moving abroad or delaying retirement because of it. But there’s opportunity, too. With Americans over 55 controlling almost three-quarters of the nation’s wealth, they are investing heavily in trying to live not just longer but better. There’s an explosion of new technologies, spa treatments and real or dubious ways for people to biohack their way to preserving it. The global biohacking market is expected to more than double to $69 billion in the next four years, and entrepreneur Bryan Johnson predicts he can make humans immortal by 2039. 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, “for the first time in human history, tens of millions of us can reasonably expect to live into our 80s, 90s, and beyond—yet we’ve barely begun to innovate for what those extra decades should look and feel like.” The Longevity Preparedness Index Tingle thinks about all of this a lot. It’s why he just partnered with Joe Coughlin, founder and director of the MIT AgeLab, to create a Longevity Preparedness Index. It measures people’s readiness for aging against eight “domains” of strategies that have been shown to improve the length and quality of life. Taking steps to improve health and wealth are just two of them. The other areas include planning a roster of activities, building social connections, creating a care plan, picking the right community, finding optimal accommodation, and preparing for tough life transitions. In a survey of 1,300 U.S. adults, the average score was 60 out of 100. (Click here to take the quiz yourself.) Americans score especially low when it comes to planning continuing care, even though 70% are likely to need it. Fortune’s Diane Brady, MIT AgeLab Director Joe Coughlin, and John Hancock CEO Brooks Tingle in conversation at the company’s “Longer. Healthier. Better” symposium. Courtesy of John Hancock “You can’t always control how you age,” says Coughlin, who famously created the AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System) suit that lets people feel what it’s like to navigate the world in an old body.…

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