Matsuo
leads an organization that is over 100 years old. The company was founded
in the early 1880s as the Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Company by entrepreneur
Zenjiro Yasuda and made it part of the Yasuda zaibatsu. A key event happened on January 2004 when
Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Company merged with Meiji Mutual Life Insurance
Company to create the Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company.
The
firm today is Japan’s third-largest
private insurer. Meiji Yasuda Life boasts of being the market leader in the
group insurance sector. It has over 38,000 employees and has headquarters in
Tokyo, Japan. Meiji Yasuda Life has 74 regional offices, 18 group marketing
departments, and 980 agency offices. The
firm also operates internationally with subsidiaries, an affiliate and offices
in nine cities around the world.
Even
by international standards the company is huge.
At the end of fiscal year 2011 the firm
had life insurance in force of $2.563 trillion and assets of $360 billion.
Companies
this size must tread carefully and look for greater revenues which at the same
time are deemed safe. When it does make a move it is in large proportions. It
recently announced plans to buy foreign bonds as a hedging move and the amount
was at a cool $5 billion.
Matsuo
and his team must also look at new markets given the changing demographics in
Japan. In an interview in the early part
of 2013, he stated that the company would increase the number of residential
rooms in its nursing care facilities to 1,000 in four or five years. Given Japan’s graying population Meiji Yasuda
Life made this move to better serve its customers while at the same time have a
synergic effect on insurance sales products.
The
company may be one of the oldest and largest but Matsuo knows he can’t sit on
company laurels but must constantly adjust to changing times. 
No comments:
Post a Comment