My contribution to a board
My usefulness to a board would be narrow and, I hope, practical. For twenty-nine years I have decided what companies say to customers in order to sell them something, first in a direct-response agency, then at two insurers and a comparison site. I can read a company's advertising, its sales scripts and its partner contracts and tell a board what a reasonable customer is likely to believe after encountering them. I can also say what that belief will cost when it meets reality, because I have spent the past five years measuring exactly that at claim.
Japan's consumer companies are selling to an older population, increasingly at a distance, and through partners paid in ways their boards rarely see. Many boards receive acquisition figures and complaint counts on separate pages, prepared by different departments. I would help a board put them together: what each channel costs per customer who stays, which claims rest on surveys of people who are not customers, and which safeguards for older customers confirm understanding rather than presence.
I would not offer myself as a financial expert for audit purposes, nor as a specialist in investment or actuarial matters. A Japanese board weighing a candidate like me should see me as the outside director who asks how the company's growth is being sold. I would expect to serve a year as a member before chairing any committee, and I would expect the company secretary and the chair to tell me when my insurance frame is narrowing my view.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | A voluntary customer, sustainability or conduct committee of a listed company, after a year as a member |
|---|
| Ready to join | Voluntary nominating committee · Risk or compliance committee of a consumer-facing business · Sustainability committee whose remit includes customer outcomes |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 20 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Consumer services whose customers are increasingly over 65, such as travel, home maintenance and pharmacy retail · Regional railway and transport groups with consumer businesses · Subscription and membership businesses outside retail and insurance
- Company type
- A company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime or Standard Market, with a nominating committee and a published skills matrix for its board
- Company stage
- A company changing how it sells to older customers, or rebuilding trust after a conduct or advertising problem
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking one outside-director seat at a listed Japanese consumer company whose customers are growing older and whose sales increasingly happen by telephone, online or through partners. Travel, home maintenance, pharmacy retail and regional transport groups with consumer businesses are where my experience would carry over most directly. I would like to join a voluntary nominating committee or a risk, compliance or sustainability committee, and after a year I would be ready to chair a committee whose remit includes customer outcomes if the board wished. I am not looking for a seat chosen for the word marketing on a skills matrix. Before going further I would want to understand what the chair believes the board cannot currently see about how the company sells, and how the audit and supervisory board members or audit committee hear about complaints.
Judgement in practice
01Telling our board that a growth figure depended on customers who would leave
In 2024 our mid-term plan assumed 190,000 new policies a year, and digital partners paid by the application were the cheapest way to reach it. Our analysts had shown that 41% of point-site policies lapsed within four months. I told the board, with our chief financial officer present, that I could meet the new-policy figure only by buying customers who would not stay, and proposed replacing it with policies in force at thirteen months. Two directors were concerned that the parent's investors would read a lower figure as weakness. The board accepted the change on condition that the value of new business was reported beside it. On another board I would ask early which customers a growth figure assumes, and how long they are expected to remain.
02Reporting our own pricing error before compliance found it
In 2022 one of our web pages showed cancer premiums for applicants aged 60 to 64 about 12% below the correct rate for eleven days. My team found it during a routine check, and 312 people had applied at the quoted premium. Our legal team advised that we could correct the premium before issue. I recommended that we honour the quoted rate for the first policy year at a cost of about ¥14 million, tell each applicant what had happened, and report the error to the audit and supervisory board members at their next meeting rather than at the half-year. My president agreed. I would expect the same from management on any board: errors raised early, with a recommendation and its cost.
03Advising a non-profit board to refuse a sponsor
In 2022 a consumer-lending company offered Hidamari Household Finance Circle ¥3 million a year to sponsor its classes for older residents, about a third of our income. I advised the board to decline, because the classes covered borrowing decisions and the sponsor's name would sit on the handouts. Two directors argued that the classes would be cut without the money. We declined, adopted written sponsorship rules and replaced most of the funding through a municipal grant the following year. Two class series were postponed. I took from it that a board should write its rules on independence before the attractive offer arrives.
My first year on a board
Before my first meeting I would ask the company secretary for three things that rarely reach a new director together: the last two years of board papers on sales and marketing, the complaint data behind them, and the contracts with the partners who bring the company its customers. I would read them side by side and write down the questions they raised, then hold them until I had heard management's own account.
During the first months I would spend a day where customers meet the company, whether a contact centre, a pharmacy counter or a booking line, and listen to recorded conversations chosen by the people who supervise them rather than by the executives presenting to me. I would meet the chair, the head of compliance and the audit and supervisory board members separately.
Through the first annual cycle I would speak mainly to ask questions and would hold back proposals unless I saw a risk to customers that could not wait. At the end of the year I would ask the chair to tell me plainly which of my questions helped and which reflected an insurer's habits that did not fit the company.
Conflicts and their management
Three groups of companies would be closed to me. The first is any insurer, insurance agency, comparison site or affiliate network, since each either competes with Tomoshibi Life or sells to it. The second is any company that supplies Tomoshibi Life or Kawasemi Holdings with airtime, advertising or research, including broadcasters and agencies. The third is any mail-order, catalogue or television-shopping retailer, because those businesses compete with our parent. I would ask a prospective company to check its supplier and customer lists against all three before a nomination proceeded.
An appointment would need written consent from our president and from Kawasemi Holdings. I would disclose my employment, my shareholding in Kawasemi through the employee plan and my directorship at Hidamari Household Finance Circle, which receives no funding from Tomoshibi Life or its parent and which I would keep that way.
If a matter touching any of those relationships came before the board, I would say so before discussion began, leave the room and ask for the recusal to be minuted. If such matters arose more than occasionally, the right course would be to resign the seat rather than attend it partially. I would keep what I know of Tomoshibi Life's customers, prices and partners entirely out of another board's deliberations.
My independence statement
I am a serving executive officer of an insurance subsidiary and hold shares in its listed parent through the group's employee shareholding plan. Whether I could be designated an independent officer would be for the company to decide under the Tokyo Stock Exchange's criteria and its own standards, once it knew every relationship between it, Tomoshibi Life, Kawasemi Holdings and me. I would supply that list in writing before any nomination and would not describe myself as independent in advance.
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Hidamari Household Finance Circle
Board of directors; programme committee member
June 2019–present
Non-executive director of a Kawasaki non-profit organisation that runs household-finance classes for older residents; helps set its teaching programme and sponsorship rules.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Tomoshibi Life Insurance Company, Limited
Board of directors
April 2021–present
Presents a quarterly marketing and conduct report covering acquisition cost, persistency, claimant surprise and complaints from older customers.
Reported to a committee
Tomoshibi Life Insurance Company, Limited
Audit and supervisory board
2021–present
Reports complaint trends, advertising errors and the results of advertising reviews to the audit and supervisory board members twice a year.
Reported to a committee
Kawasemi Holdings
Board risk and compliance committee
2022–present
Reports annually on advertising-representation risk across the group's insurance and mail-order businesses.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Hakari Navi Co., Ltd.
Board of directors
2015–2017
Presented the insurance business plan and partner terms as executive officer; was not a director.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
India keeps the IICA Independent Directors' Databank for people who serve as independent directors of Indian companies. It has no application to the Japanese seats I am considering, and I have not registered. In Japan, an outside director's independence is assessed by the company against the Tokyo Stock Exchange's criteria and its own published standards.
- A twelve-session programme for prospective outside directors, covering the Corporate Governance Code, internal control and nominating committee practice, completed in 2025
- Annual briefings from Tomoshibi Life's audit and supervisory board members on internal control reporting
- Non-profit board service since 2019, including setting sponsorship rules
- Kawasemi Holdings' annual compliance training for executive officers