What the business is
Philip Morris International sells Marlboro and is pivoting to smoke-free products led by iQOS, its heated-tobacco device.
How it started
PMI, whose core business is cigarettes, created wholly owned subsidiary Reviti to sell life insurance, using actuarial discounts to push smokers toward its own alternatives.
What happened
Discount tiers: switch to e-cigarettes 2.5%, iQOS for three months 25%, quit at least a year 50%. A 20-year-old nonsmoker pays about £5 ($6.47) a month for £150,000 of cover. PMI says discounts are set from scientific data on each product's risk-reduction potential.
What has to be true
Insurance pricing turns a health claim into a cash incentive the customer feels monthly — a stronger push than advertising ever gets.
The discount ladder is tilted toward PMI's own iQOS (25%) over generic e-cigarettes (2.5%), so the insurer doubles as a customer-acquisition engine.
It operationalises the endgame the CEO described: exiting cigarettes entirely, with lower excise taxes and better margins benefiting shareholders along the way.
What can be applied
An insurer you own is a pricing instrument for your strategy: PMI turned actuarial discounts into a subsidy for its own device, aligning a new business with the parent's pivot.
Aftermath
As of the April 2019 launch, Reviti sold life insurance in the UK with plans to expand into more markets overseas; the source records no later results. PMI continued to position iQOS as its biggest bet in the smoke-free transition.
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