Fundamental Strategy

Established in 1893, Taiyo Life is a life insurance company with a history of more than 120 years. From the 1950s, the company adopted a unique marketing strategy focused on high volume sales of short-term endowment insurance—a highly savings-oriented product—in the household market to housewives through door-to-door sales activities. As a result, Taiyo Life has built a unique customer base centered on the middle-aged and elderly as well as women. From the mid-1990s, a combination of prolonged low interest rates, deregulation, a shift in customer needs and other factors caused changes in the operating environment. Taiyo Life quickly adapted to these changes by shifting its sales from savings-oriented products to protection-oriented products, such as death protection as well as medical and nursing care protection.

Hoken Kumikyoku Best, Taiyo Life's mainstay product, differs from conventional insurance plans in that it allows for combinations of individual insurance coverage (basic policies) through Hoken Kumitate Tokuyaku rider. This serves to boost the flexibility of insurance planning and revision, while also making products more simple and easy to understand with more affordable premiums. This product enables Taiyo Life to provide many customers with lifelong high-quality, fine-tuned support and services as their life stages change.

Evolution of Hoken Kumikyoku Best

Marketing Strategy

Taiyo Life has adopted a marketing strategy that is quite different from that of other large domestic life insurers. Whereas other life insurers have extended their marketing networks nationwide, Taiyo Life is conducting sales activities closely tied to metropolitan areas and major regional cities with high population densities. This enables the company to carry out home-visit marketing activities with efficiency and to cultivate the household market in greater depth. Moreover, in contrast to most large Japanese life insurers whose core sales target is the worksite market, Taiyo Life employs a sales consulting approach in which sales representatives visit customers at home where they can take more time to discuss the insurance needs of the customer.

Taiyo Life's Sales Strategy

New Policy Enrollment Status Based on Gender

• Source: Compiled by T&D Holdings based on Summary of Life Insurance Business in Japan (Fiscal 2014), Life Insurance Association of Japan

Transforming Taiyo Life into a Provider of Coverage for the Whole Family

Taiyo Life is working to offer coverage for the whole family by leveraging a customer base in the household market starting with housewives and broadening its market to include heads of households and children. Generally, a sales agent goes to the head of the household's workplace to sell insurance and the insurance is chosen from the perspective of the head of the household. Taiyo Life, however, stands from the housewives' perspective, proposing the insurance product based on the necessary protection for the family left behind should something happen to the head of the household. This approach allows Taiyo Life to propose insurance in a manner that wins the understanding of customers. Taiyo Life will propose insurance which is optimally designed for each customer, based on an analysis of the household's insurance coverage to clarify what kind of protection is insufficient. Through this consulting sales process, Taiyo Life will provide coverage for the whole family.

Declaration of Best Senior Service