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| October23,2000 |
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Creating Services Better Suited to Customer Needs and
Building a More
Open Infrastructure |
| Sumitomo Marine and Mitsui Marine
Group |
Nissay Group |
| The Sumitomo Marine & Fire Insurance Co.,Ltd. |
The Dowa Fire & Marine Insurance Co., Ltd. |
| Mitsui Marine & Fire Insurance Co.,Ltd |
Nippon Life Insurance Company |
| This is to announce that The Sumitomo Marine & Fire Insurance
Co.,Ltd. (Hiroyuki Uemura, President), Mitsui Marine & Fire Insurance
Co.,Ltd. (Takeo Inokuchi, President), Dowa Fire & Marine Insurance
Co.,Ltd. (Shuichiro Sudo, President) and Nippon Life Insurance Company
(Ikuo Uno, President) have reached an agreement today covering cooperation
in creating services better suited to customer needs and building
a more open infrastructure. |
1.Background and Content of Agreement
As the traditional insurance classifications of "life insurance"
and "non-life insurance" continue to change, especially
with the development of third sector insurance, it is becoming ever
more important that insurance firms be able to develop and offer "total"
product and service solutions, integrating both life and non-life
insurance features, and to strengthen their underwriting capabilities
in an even more responsible manner. For it is these measures that
will enable firms to provide the quality insurance services that customers
today require.
An immediate challenge confronting the insurance industry in Japan
as it enters the 21st century is that of being able to respond to
the customer's needs for increasingly diverse products and services
in a prompt and effective manner.
Mutually aware of the need to meet this challenge, the four companies
comprising the Sumitomo Marine and Fire Insurance and Mitsui Marine
and Fire Insurance Group and the Nippon life Insurance and Dowa Fire
and Marine Insurance Group have forged an agreement to unite in combining
their powerful product and service development and underwriting capabilities
with a broad customer base to develop new business functions along
the following conceptual lines.
(1)Partner companies will strive to develop "Services better
suited to customer needs" by drawing on individual brand strength
and design capabilities:
- Partner companies will share their diverse strengths in products
and services and jointly develop new types of products and services.
- Companies will also work to jointly develop and offer products and
services geared to such emerging new markets as the Internet.
(2)Partner companies will take the lead in configuring open infrastructures
geared to the requirements of our increasingly network oriented communities:
- Efforts will include joint development and establishment of industry
standards for a system of insurance agents and an industry infrastructure.
2.Target Areas
| 1) |
Partners Will Share Individual Strengths in products and
services and Jointly Develop New Types of Products and Services
(Document
1) |
|
- Specifically, this will involve partner companies providing
their products and services and jointly developed products and
services on both an OEM basis and through a co-insurance scheme.
These will include enhanced products geared to the corporate
market and products, including those with highly value-added
features, geared to the needs of the individual consumer.
- Partner firms will strive to expand the overall market through
drawing on individual brand strength to promote products to
customers.
- The group will also study ways to jointly develop and implement
administrative and infrastructural frameworks and to promote
reciprocal supply and joint
development of products and services. |
|
|
| 2) |
Creating new markets by Jointly Developing Products and
Services Under a Common Brand |
|
- Partner companies will develop new products and services
geared to current customer needs through uniting their product
and service development capabilities, which lead the industry,
with the customer trust and loyalty that they built up over
the years.
- One specific manifestation of these efforts will include a
"Do it yourself insurance policy" product developed
and marketed under a common brand for customers who would like
to purchase insurance over the Internet.
- Partner firms will also develop a system of integrated services
that combine Internet services with a system of insurance agents
and sales teams that offer face-to-face consulting services. |
|
|
| 3) |
Establishing a Joint Development Company to Configure and
Operate a More Open Insurance Service Infrastructure (Document
2) |
|
- |The group is planning to jointly establish a company that
will build and operate an infrastructure system for providing
insurance services with the end of March 2001 as a tentative
launch date.
- This joint company will be used as a vehicle for improving
the efficiency and enhancing the infrastructure for a system
of insurance agents that will market life and non-life insurance
policies in an integrated format. The company will also be used
to build an open platform system and create common industry
standards for administrative systems that can be shared by the
insurance industry as a whole.
- At the same time, the company will submit various proposals
to life and non-life insurance companies and systems development
firms in order to enlist their participation.
|
The four companies partnering this
project will also be studying the possibility of extending cooperation
to the field of risk management, specifically targeting overseas
risk and financial risk, based on the spirit of cooperation
under the agreement.
In line with this joint agreement, the partner companies will
be looking at ways to strengthen the cross-share holdings among
the companies in their various groups.
3.For the Near Term
Efforts are being made to establish project teams that will
focus on each of the target areas in order to have the systems
in place that will enable work to proceed quickly.
 Overview
of Companies Participating in the Joint Project Group (as of
end of March 2000)
The end
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