Aflac 2009 Annual Report Download - page 18

When we combine honesty with caring service,
Strong Aflac Brand + Fun
Advertising = Marketing
Phenomenon
One ip through Japanese television
channels or a walk down a metropolitan
Japanese city street is all it takes to
conrm that product advertising for all
industries is everywhere and perhaps,
overwhelming. To cut through the
advertising clutter, Aac Japan leveraged
its brand with a new twist on the popular
Aac Duck that consumers have ocked
to over the last six years. To support the
promotion of our newly revised EVER
product in 2009, the Aac Duck donned
a cat costume in its latest commercials
to become a unique new character – a
maneki neko duck. The literal translation
of maneki neko is “beckoning cat.” With
its paw raised to beckon good luck, it is a
familiar icon throughout Asia.
To complement the commercials and
enhance the reception by consumers,
we created a truck with the maneki neko
duck character on board that traveled
from city to city throughout Japan. At
one location in central Tokyo, more than
20,000 people showed up to see and
touch the beckoning cat duck, hoping it
would bring them good luck. Events like
that have occurred across Japan, and
the jingle in the television commercial
has become the number one cell phone
download in Japan. On Aac Japan’s
Web site, fans can even customize the
commercial jingle to send an original
song to their friends and family. And from
August through the end of the year more
than 390,000 consumers have created
their own maneki neko jingle. From the
introduction of the maneki neko duck
in August through the end of 2009,
Aac Japan distributed more than 1.5
million miniature stuffed maneki neko
toy ducks. The success of the maneki
neko duck campaign has surpassed our
expectations and has become nothing
short of an advertising phenomenon.
More important, it drew great attention
to our new EVER product, resulting in
strong medical policy sales for the last ve
months of 2009.
Technology Enhances
Administrative Efficiency
Technology has long been the essence
of what is perhaps Aac Japan’s most
signicant competitive strength –
administrative efciency. Our maintenance
expenses per policy in force remain lower
than every other life insurance company
operating in Japan, allowing us to give
consumers quality products at affordable
prices while compensating our sales
force with competitive commissions.
Throughout the years, we have
undertaken many initiatives to improve
our efciency, including the development
and promotion of Aac Japan’s electronic
enrollment software and our net billing
system. We will continue to prioritize and
rene our efforts to operate efciently
and put our resources into making
affordable products. We believe that
the Aac Contact Center plays a critical
role in establishing and maintaining
strong relationships with our customers,
agencies and banks. We believe it is
important to operate efciently while
providing high-quality service.
Disciplined Investment
Process Yields Consistent
Results
Insurance company investment portfolios
were the subject of intense investor
scrutiny in 2009, and Aac’s portfolio
was no exception. However, throughout
the year, we remained focused on an
investment approach that we believed
was most prudent for our policyholders
and shareholders – purchasing
investment assets that best match
the liabilities of our insurance policies.
We continue to believe that approach
is the best course, and our insurance
product needs will continue to drive the
investment process. At the same time,
we will continue to emphasize liquidity,
safety, and quality when purchasing
investments to help mitigate risk. Some
Aac Japan investment highlights for
2009 follow:
• Investments and cash increased
4.0% to $64.2 billion at the end of
2009. In yen, investments and cash
were up 5.2%.
• Net investment income increased
10.3% to $2.3 billion. In yen, net
investment income was down .1%.
• The average yield on new
investments was 3.03% in 2009,
compared with 3.43% in 2008.
Despite global credit downgrades from
rating agencies, Aac Japan’s overall
credit quality remained high. At the end of
2009, 93.4% of Aac Japan’s debt and
perpetual securities were rated investment
grade on an amortized cost basis.
We’ve got you under our wing.
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