From the Osaka claims centre to the CIO's chair

Mandate

Decide the future of a stalled policy-system rewrite, make claims systems hold up through a catastrophe and bring policyholder data at agencies under control.

Outcomes

• Recommended halting a ¥19 billion rewrite in March 2021; the board accepted a ¥4.1 billion write-off and a product-by-product replacement.
• Moved small-business property in 2023 and household fire in 2025 onto the new platform, switching off 38 per cent of mainframe batch programs.
• Cut the time to pay 80 per cent of catastrophe claims from 74 days in 2018 to 23 days in 2024, with the claims department.
• Ended bulk policyholder exports to agencies in March 2025; agency-related data incidents fell from 63 to 11 a year.
• Launched family registration in 2023; 118,000 policyholders had nominated a relative by March 2026.

Decisions in context

Kotonami's president asked me to join in October 2020 as the first executive officer in its technology function to come from outside the company. I arrived to find a policy-system rewrite reporting amber with only 31 per cent of its requirements specified, and my first five months were spent on the evidence for stopping it. Once the board had decided, the work became a long sequence of smaller programmes: migration product by product onto a packaged platform, surge mode for catastrophe claims, the end of agency data exports and the family registration service. I chair the board of our systems subsidiary, lead about 760 people and manage contracts with three main integrators. I have also grown the CIO's office from 40 to 120 people, so that design reviews and acceptance testing are done by Kotonami's own engineers.

Reason for the move

Current role. I am staying to finish the policy-platform programme, and would add one outside directorship only with the board's agreement.

Mandate

Move quotation, policy and claims systems off an ageing on-premises platform and keep the online channel reliable through renewal peaks.

Outcomes

• Moved quotation and sales systems to a public cloud region in Japan in 2019; quotation availability rose to 99.95 per cent.
• Settled about 4,300 vehicle claims from the September 2018 typhoon largely through photograph assessment.
• Renegotiated the main outsourcing contract from person-month billing to service levels, cutting run cost by 14 per cent.
• Kept policyholder data in Japan when the parent proposed a European region, at about ¥180 million a year of extra cost.

Decisions in context

As head of information systems I ran technology for an insurer with no branches and no agents: its website and two contact centres were the whole business. I reported to the Japanese president, with a functional line to the group CIO in Europe, and led 140 staff and about 260 contractors. My main programme moved quotation and sales onto a public cloud region in Japan, which ended the outages that used to coincide with the April renewal peak. The September 2018 typhoon tested the photograph-based motor claims route I had built in my previous role: we settled about 4,300 vehicle claims, many from flooded car parks at the Kansai ports. I also argued, against the parent's preference, that policyholder data should stay in a Japanese region, and the board agreed to the extra cost. I left when the group centralised its Asian systems in Europe.

Reason for the move

The parent group decided to run its Asian subsidiaries' systems from Europe, and Kotonami offered a whole technology function with catastrophe exposure, agencies and older customers.

Mandate

Replace the claims handling system and the contact centres' telephony, and shorten motor claims for customers who never meet an agent.

Outcomes

• Replaced the claims system in 2014 without a day of lost handling.
• Gave 420 contact-centre staff a single screen with call recording and policy history; average handling time fell by 18 per cent.
• Introduced photograph-based estimates for minor vehicle damage in 2016.
• Cut motor claims cycle time for minor damage from 19 to 11 days.

Decisions in context

I came to Tokyo from Osaka to learn how an insurer works without agencies. At Suzukaze Direct every customer arrived through a website or a telephone call, and every claim began on a contact-centre screen. My first task was replacing a claims system that the company had outgrown, which went live in 2014 after six rehearsals of the switch-over. I then rebuilt the contact centres' telephony so that 420 staff in Sapporo and Fukuoka saw a caller's policy, claim history and earlier calls on one screen. In 2016 we began settling minor vehicle damage from customers' photographs and a repairer's estimate, which cut cycle time for those claims from 19 days to 11. It was the first time I owned a budget, a team and suppliers in my own name, and I learnt how much a contract's structure shapes what an integrator delivers.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead the whole technology function.

Mandate

Plan and deliver the claims workflow system, then lead the claims side of the post-merger migration.

Outcomes

• Delivered a claims workflow system in 2009 that ended paper routing of approvals.
• Applied the industry's area-based total-loss decisions after the March 2011 earthquake to about 6,200 policies in Tohoku.
• Migrated 1.1 million claim records to the acquiring group's systems in 2012.
• Trained 30 claims supervisors to write testable requirements.

Decisions in context

This was the role in which I crossed from claims into systems. I had represented the claims department on a system project and finished an evening master's degree, and in April 2007 I became the manager responsible for claims systems planning. The workflow system we delivered in 2009 ended the paper routing of approvals between desks and branches. On 11 March 2011 our work changed overnight. Nishikaze had about 6,200 household policies in the areas of Tohoku that the industry treated as total losses from aerial photographs, and my team built the matching of those area decisions to individual policies and addresses so that families could be paid without waiting for a visit. Seven months later Nishikaze merged into a larger group. I led the migration of our claims records and left once it was complete.

Reason for the move

After the merger the claims systems I had built were retired, and I wanted to build rather than decommission.

Mandate

Adjust large commercial property losses, then supervise household and small-business claims in Osaka.

Outcomes

• Adjusted about 140 commercial fire and typhoon claims a year in Hiroshima.
• Supervised 12 handlers from 2003 and reduced the share of claims open beyond 90 days from 21 to 9 per cent.
• Represented the claims department on the 2004 to 2006 claims system project.
• Completed a part-time master's degree in information management in 2006.

Decisions in context

In Hiroshima I adjusted large property losses: factory fires, warehouses and schools damaged by typhoons, and the occasional landslide claim from the hills behind the city. I learnt to read construction drawings, to work with loss adjusters and engineers, and to explain a coverage decision to a business owner who had lost a year's production. In 2003 I moved to Osaka as a claims supervisor with twelve handlers. That was when I saw how much of their day was decided by the claims system, rather than by the claims themselves, and I began keeping a notebook of every workaround they used. I represented the claims department on the new claims system project from 2004, and studied information management in the evenings so that I could understand the project team's language and argue with it.

Reason for the move

Asked to lead claims systems planning after representing the claims department on the system project.

Mandate

Handle household and small-business property claims from first report to payment.

Outcomes

• Handled about 600 household and small-business claims a year.
• Worked from the temporary claims offices in Amagasaki and Kobe for five months after the January 1995 earthquake.
• Drafted the claims centre's first plain-language explanation of the earthquake exclusion for agencies to use.

Decisions in context

I joined Nishikaze straight from university in April 1994, and nine months later the Great Hanshin earthquake decided what kind of claims handler I would become. For five months I worked from temporary offices in Amagasaki and Kobe, visiting households and small shops, recording damage and too often explaining that their fire policy excluded fire caused by an earthquake and that they had not bought earthquake cover. Our files were paper, sorted into boxes by district, and a family's wait depended partly on which box their file was in. Back in Osaka I handled about 600 claims a year and drafted a plain-language note on the earthquake exclusion for our agencies to give customers at the point of sale. In 1999 I was rotated to large-loss work in Hiroshima, as Nishikaze moved its claims staff between offices.

Reason for the move

Transferred to large-loss property adjusting in Hiroshima as part of Nishikaze's rotation of claims staff.