Strategy

In Japan, there are issues facing society as a whole, such as the increasing number of people requiring nursing care due to an aging population, rising social security costs, and a decreasing working-age population. In addition, bankruptcies and closures of nursing care businesses, of which 80% are small businesses, are increasing due to factors such as low employee compensation, harsh work environments, and declining average income/expense ratios. In 2040, the gap between supply and demand for caregivers to provide nursing care is expected to climb to 690,000 people.

Our Nursing Care & Seniors Business is taking on the challenge of closing the gap between the growing demand for nursing care and the supply of caregivers, and improving the sustainability of the nursing care insurance system. A major pillar of this is “egaku,” a Real Data Platform (RDP) for Nursing Care that provides security, health, and wellbeing. “egaku” will create solutions that contribute to improving productivity with quality based on industry leader Sompo Care’s big data (real data) on users, as well as its operational capabilities such as services and know-how, Palantir’s data integration technology, and the R&D potential of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Furthermore, “egaku” aims to contribute to the sustainability of the industry as a whole by developing solutions leveraging ND Software’s products, channels, and customer base.

“egaku” aims to become the de facto standard for the nursing care industry as a whole. Its objective is to improve the sustainability of the nursing care industry by reducing the needed number of caregivers through increased productivity and increasing the number of caregivers through improved engagement (fostering job satisfaction among nursing care workers), and to minimize impacts on people’s lives through various means, such as through a reduction in nursing care employee turnover.

The targets set for 2030 regarding economic value to be created are 100 billion yen in introduced economic benefits for customers, 30 billion yen in revenue, and 10 billion yen in operating income. Our target for 2040 is to create about 3.7 trillion yen worth of social impact by closing the supply-demand gap for caregivers by about 220,000 people, and through such initiatives, the Sompo Group aims to improve its corporate value.

“egaku” provides three types of services to meet the needs of nursing care businesses: digitization support services, data utilization services, and professional services.

Regarding its digitization support services, “egaku” leverages the effectiveness of its synergy with ND Software to provide support to nursing care businesses in acquiring data through digitization and introducing business systems, and links these services to its data utilization services.

Regarding its data utilization services, “egaku” provides an app developed with Palantir to improve productivity and quality, and supports improvements in the quality of care by visualizing it through data utilization and freeing up time through improvements in operational efficiency due to assistance optimizations via data analysis.

Regarding its professional services, “egaku” strongly supports PDCA cycles for care management, which have the value of providing data utilization services through consultations on management methods and support from specialized personnel that solve operational issues for nursing care businesses made visible through the use of data.

In the two-year business launch period from FY2023 to FY2024, “egaku” will increase the number of companions working to realize sustainable nursing care through the use of data in the nursing care industry while building up a track record of its use both internally and externally. We aim to provide “egaku” to 100 locations in FY2023, and to a cumulative total of 300 locations in FY2024.

In the medium term, we aim to achieve a revenue of 30 billion yen and an operating income of 10 billion yen in FY2030 for Sompo Care by building an at-home nursing care model in cooperation with local governments and expanding overseas. In the long term, we will work on standardizing nursing care quality through joint research with AIST, offer SOMPO’s know-how to nursing care businesses through “egaku,” and aim to establish a system that will become the de facto standard for the entire nursing care industry.

Life insurance originally played a complementary role to the social security system, but its role will change dramatically due to the declining birthrate, aging population, and demographic changes. For example, the Japanese government proclaimed a goal to “lengthen life expectancy” in its Future Investment Strategy 2018, and the public and private sectors are working together to support health promotion and disease prevention for each and every citizen.

Sompo Himawari Life believes that in an era when people live for 100 years, in addition to life insurance’s traditional role of preparing for “any possibility,” it is important to provide support tailored to the “everyday” health of each and every customer. We are transforming ourselves into a “health support enterprise” to help realize people’s desire to live long, healthy lives. To achieve this, we will provide new value in the form of Insurhealth^®, a combination of the essential functions of insurance and the health support functions of healthcare.

We have launched a total of 10 Insurhealth^® products to date. For the income protection insurance “Jibun to Kazoku no Omamori” launched in April 2018 as the first Insurhealth^® product, we introduced the Get☆Healthy Challenge! program, the first-ever program in the industry to support improvements in the health of customers.^*3

We also launched the cancer insurance “Health Support Cancer Insurance: Yuuki no Omamori” in October 2021, which offers total support from before onset to post-treatment care through “prevention” in the form of premium discounts for quitting smoking and the promotion of lifestyle maintenance and improvement apps, “early detection” by providing cancer risk screening services, reasonable “coverage” in response to the social security system and the real-life, up-to-date situation of cancer treatment, and “post-treatment care” by providing services for cancer patients, realizing a “new form of cancer insurance.”

In addition, “Health Support Variable Insurance Shorai no Omamori,” which was launched in May 2023, was the first of its kind in the industry to introduce a “health stage system,” which adds to health reserves based on a customer’s smoking status and health conditions at the time of enrollment, and a new challenge system, which further adds to health reserves based on a customer’s success in quitting smoking and improvements in their health conditions after enrollment.^*4

In addition to providing the Insurhealth^® products mentioned above, we are also engaged in communication activities (health support CX) to help customers experience better health through the value of these products. For example, in the Get☆Healthy Challenge! program, we continuously encourage customers in every possible way to take on challenges even after they have enrolled, thereby realizing health support. We also provide support to help customers maintain their health after successful completion of the challenge.

Based on the analysis of data from customers who succeeded in the Get☆Healthy Challenge! program, we have found that customers who had undergone changes in their living environment have a higher success rate in the challenge than those who had not.

In other words, it can be said that times when people experience changes in their living environment are also when their health awareness rises and when changes in health-related actions are likely to occur. Going forward, by preparing and utilizing data on our customers, we will communicate with them at the most optimal timing when each individual’s health awareness is rising. For example, we started testing the use of the generative AI system ChatGPT for communication with customers. Through such efforts, we aim to improve the precision of communication with customers, which will lead to further support for their health-related actions in the future.