General Insurance Association of Japan (GIAJ) chairman Shinichiro Funabiki has underscored the importance of restoring public trust while strengthening disaster resilience and modernising insurance distribution in defining the insurance industry’s agenda, as Japan faces intensifying climate risks and cyber threats and tighter regulatory oversight.
Marking six months in office, Funabiki reflected on recent fires, earthquakes, and severe weather events as reminders that insurers must deliver “prompt and appropriate insurance payouts” while further raising risk awareness among businesses and consumers.
In his year-end statement released on 18 December, he emphasised that climate change-driven disasters are becoming “our new reality,” as he required insurers to reinforce their role as social infrastructure that supports economic stability and a “safe and secure society”.
Trust restoration — Funabiki’s foremost initiative, initially laid down in September — is centred on reforming agency sales, with trials for an Agency Business Quality Evaluation System underway, ahead of a full rollout in Fiscal Year 2026 to improve sales governance, comparative recommendations and compliance standards, customer-centric solicitation, and fair competition across Japan’s powerful agency channel.
“We are advancing initiatives centered on ‘efforts to improve the quality of insurance agency solicitation’ to achieve ‘thorough customer-centric business operations’, and ‘efforts to enhance risk management awareness within companies’ for the ‘realization of a sound competitive environment,’” he said, adding that heavy public feedback is shaping revised evaluation guidelines and self-assessment checklists.
The GIAJ has also overhauled agent qualifications, introducing a mandatory compliance officer credential for large multi-representative agencies and expanding legal training that embeds compliance capability as regulators tighten the supervision of comparative sales and benefits.
On corporate risk management, the group is working with the government and the academe to lift boardroom engagement on insurance purchasing and resilience through executive seminars, study groups, and plans for an industry-wide risk manager training and future certification for stronger decision-making.
Funabiki warned that cyber risk is another rising pressure, as sophisticated attacks threaten entire supply chains. He said that insurers would bolster resilience through specialised products and risk-mitigation services.
“Advancing risk management in Japanese companies enhances organisational resilience, improves the quality of management decision-making, and encourages new challenges,” Funabiki said, as he called for coordinated public–private action to support sustainable industry growth in a volatile environment.
Operational modernisation rounds out the GIAJ agenda, with the launch of paperless systems for compulsory auto claims and electronic bond confirmations designed to expedite payments, cut costs, and strengthen security for insurers and public-sector counterparts.
On fraud and claims integrity, the group has intensified training to detect fabricated auto accidents, while consumer and small-and-medium-enterprise surveys revealed persistent underinsurance, low cyber cover uptake, and limited business continuity planning that heighten loss severity when shocks hit.
“Recognising risks as personal concerns and making daily preparation for potential damage is essential,” Funabiki said, citing efforts to boost flood risk awareness and damage coverage through digital tools as attachment rate is significantly lower than that for earthquake insurance.
During the ASEAN Insurance Council meeting held in Cambodia late last month, Japan’s insurers shared the nation’s best practices and countermeasures against natural disasters, among other industry improvement efforts. The GIAJ is now preparing to be the secretariat for next year’s East Asia Insurance Congress in Tokyo.
“We will steadily advance these efforts so that they deliver tangible results and bring about visible changes in our industry,” Funabiki vowed.
