Aflac Life Insurance Japan wins 2 accolades in Insurance Asia Awards 2020

The company was recognized for its ATM Cash Remittance Service and Agile@Aflac.

Aflac Life Insurance Japan bagged both the International Life Insurer of the Year - Japan and Insurance Initiative of the Year - Japan awards in the recently concluded Insurance Asia Awards, presented by Insurance Asia magazine.

The awards programme recognises the most acclaimed insurance firms in Asia that have introduced exceptional initiatives and solutions that empowered them to successfully adapt to rapidly changing customer demands and digital transformation.

Aflac Japan was lauded as it became the first life insurance company in Japan to offer an ATM Cash Remittance Service. This was alongside the 2019 launch of Agile@Aflac, an initiative aiming to create additional value for customers.

With rapid ICT advancement and diversifying lifestyles and working styles, there is a strong need for procedures and services that can be completed smoothly and easily anytime and anywhere. At the same time, due to personal information compromises and the use of Big Data, there is a growing focus on the protection of personal information.

In order to address these needs, Aflac Japan collaborated with the largest convenience store group in Japan to offer a new cash remittance service for premium refunds at more than 25,000 ATMs nationwide. This provides customers with an additional payment option and improves payment speed and security, which are key priorities for customers.

Using this service, customers can receive cash by entering the confirmation number they receive via email from Aflac Japan into a Seven Bank ATM. During the second half of 2019, this service was used approximately 1,000 times per month.

Moreover, Aflac Japan launched Agile@Aflac in 2019 to create additional value for customers by transforming its organizational structure. Historically, Aflac Japan was strongly rooted in a traditional Japanese organizational culture focused on the creation and strict execution of detailed plans.

In order to break this culture, in the initial phase, Agile@Aflac activities were leveraged to achieve customer experience enhancement, shortened speed to market, improved efficiency, and improved employee job satisfaction.

Using Agile, pain points were identified and measures to improve the customer experience were implemented. With this approach, Aflac reduced the amount of information that customers are required to submit with claims and shortened the average claim payment time for select claims from 3.5 days to as little as 5 minutes.

Agile is now being applied in additional phases and areas in order to improve customer-facing and internal services.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning product and strategy: