Aflac 2007 Annual Report Download - page 14

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Aflac Japan’s Products –
There’s Only One Number One
Japan has grappled with financing health
care for an aging population for many years.
Due to the rapidly aging demographic, it is
not surprising that consumers have been
required to shoulder a larger financial
burden for health care. In fact, copayments
have tripled over the last 12 years for most
of the population, driving consumers to seek
private insurance to help bear rising out-of-
pocket expenses. Aflac’s product line
provides a means to fill that need.
We still believe there is a large and
underpenetrated market for cancer insurance
in Japan, and we are intent on maintaining
our leadership position. To that end, we
introduced a new product in September
2007 called Cancer Forte. This is the first
major revision we’ve made to our cancer
product since we introduced 21st Century
Cancer in 2001. Responding to requests for
enhanced outpatient coverage for cancer
treatment, Cancer Forte pays outpatient
benefits for 60 days, compared with 30 days
for our old product. It also incorporates two
new features that consumers should find
attractive. First, if a policyholder is diagnosed
with cancer for the first time, we pay that
policyholder a survivor annuity from the
second year through the fifth year after
diagnosis. This is in addition to the traditional
upfront first-occurrence benefit. The second
new benefit, “Premier Support,” arranges for
a third party to provide policyholders with
counseling and doctor referral services upon
their cancer diagnosis.
We believe the need for supplemental
medical products is also strong. In February
2002, we launched a stand-alone medical
product called EVER. Since that time, we
have expanded our suite of EVER product
offerings. We further broadened our medical
product portfolio in February 2007 with
EVER Paid Up, a product that allows
policyholders to choose to pay higher
premium payments on the front end so
they’ll be payment-free at either age 60 or
65. And in August 2007, we introduced
Gentle EVER, which helps consumers who
may have a health condition that would
exclude them from purchasing our other
EVER products. We determined that there’s
an attractive and eager market for this type
of medical product in Japan and believe
Gentle EVER will be an effective means for
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