The General Insurance Association of Japan has revised its Compliance Guide for Solicitation following regulatory changes aimed at strengthening customer-first insurance sales and agency oversight.
The April 2026 edition updates the guide in response to amendments to Japan’s Insurance Business Act, as well as proposed changes to the Enforcement Regulations and the Financial Services Agency’s Comprehensive Guidelines for Supervision of Insurance Companies.
The main update is a broader review of the guidance for insurance agents and solicitors, including new pages on the criteria for “Specific Large-Scale Multi-Representative General Insurance Agencies”.
The revised guide also adds guidance on the organisational structures required for insurance solicitation and concurrent business operations.
GIAJ has included special feature pages explaining planned amendments to comparative recommendation sales regulations, following public consultation held in December 2025.
Those pages set out how multi-representative agencies should handle product comparisons and recommendations, including the need to select and recommend products based on customer intentions rather than agency interests, such as commission levels or benefits received from insurers.
The association said the guide is designed to help insurance companies provide appropriate guidance to their agencies and support agents in building suitable internal control systems.
The update follows a broader push by GIAJ to lift agency standards across Japan’s non-life market, after chairman Shinichiro Funabiki said in March that the association had accelerated an agency overhaul, launched new misconduct reporting systems and trialled an Agency Business Quality Evaluation System to supplement insurer guidance to agencies.
GIAJ said it would continue working to improve the quality of insurance sales by supporting member companies’ guidance to agencies and helping agencies establish more appropriate systems.
