A Roadmap to “Insurance + α”: Lessons from the Noto Peninsula Earthquake [Part 2]

As an insurance company, our most fundamental responsibility is to pay claims promptly to earthquake insurance policyholders. Establishing a swift and accurate initial response system, including an accident reporting framework and on-site inspections to assess damage, are critical. These measures need to stay in place to process claims as they come.

When an earthquake occurs, however, we may have tens of thousands of claims coming in over a short time span. To handle them smoothly, we need our damage assessment process to be streamlined.

To speed up our initial response, we are introducing systems that rely on digital technology. Specifically, we have developed and deployed one platform that automates various administrative processes in the event of a disaster, and another one that allows customers to easily book on-site damage assessment appointments online. To improve efficiency and convenience for customers, we’re also promoting the paperless processing of on-site damage assessment documents.

We also intend to expand our use of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO^*1) and other resources to strengthen our administrative capabilities, for example when scheduling appointments for a large number of on-site damage assessments. Our aim is to offer a quick initial response tailored to the situation of affected customers.

We have launched an initiative called Smart Supply^*2: a platform that allows victims to receive support in small lots for the supplies they tell us they need, in line with our philosophy of helping each other beyond the boundaries of insurance.

When disaster strikes, national and local authorities prioritize relief for essential daily necessities, such as food and hygiene items. Supplies necessary to rebuild livelihoods, such as canes for the elderly and circulators to dry out the floors of flooded houses, are often not covered by public relief.

Smart Supply leverages Tokio Marine Group's network to identify and deliver supplies that cannot be provided by public aid, based on interviews at evacuation centers. In the past, we provided supplies for evacuation centers, materials for home repairs and clean-up, and food for emergency meal distribution. During the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, however, insurance agents who were themselves victims of the disaster went around the affected areas to identify the needs of those impacted. Doing so helped us make our support more empathetic, tailored to victims’ needs. The experience reinforced my conviction that our agency network is a core strength of Tokio Marine Group.

When we used Smart Supply to provide relief supplies to victims of the Noto Peninsula earthquake, road conditions were so bad that trucks could not reach the Okunoto area. Instead, we had supplies sent to Nanao City, and my colleagues and I delivered them ourselves to evacuation centers and other locations. Seeing how happy those victims were to receive our aid has left a strong impression on me.

At the same time, I feel that if frontline employees had fully understood the Smart Supply initiative beforehand and if cooperation with local authorities had been smoother, we could have started our support even sooner. Going forward, companies and local authorities will have to collaborate closely to establish a swift relief system.

As an insurance company, our responsibility is to pay claims promptly, but there is more to disaster recovery than that. Platforms such as Smart Supply, which complement public assistance by providing victims with the supplies they genuinely need, will continue to be valuable.

Also, earthquakes affect everyone, causing serious damage to individual homes, small retail shops, and the buildings of large companies alike. In the aftermath, business operators often find themselves strapped for funds. We need to support businesses by informing them and helping them apply for the subsidy schemes offered by national and local authorities.

I would like to work on providing new value, on top of our basic responsibility to promptly pay insurance claims. As a non-life insurer, we have access to data and information that can benefit society, like what types of damage disasters are likely to do, and which areas lack support. Moving forward, we should challenge ourselves to leverage this data toward the development of new support platforms and services.

During disasters, we are so overwhelmed with claims beyond our ordinary workload that handling them takes all our time, and we don’t have the bandwidth to start thinking up new services. Streamlining our operations and reviewing the systems we use can reduce the workload for disaster relief, improving the environment for creating new value.

While insurance can be considered a social infrastructure, paying claims is only part of what it takes to rebuild the life of someone affected by a disaster. Public support programs are available (such as government-funded demolition and the Support Grants for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims), but have the drawback of being difficult to understand. We have created leaflets and a chatbot to help disaster victims understand what kind of support they are eligible to receive and navigate the necessary procedures. These resources are available on the Company’s website under the "Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Information" section. When we visited policyholders after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, we made sure to give them the leaflets, and received a lot of positive feedback. For example, one person told us they were anxious a lot of information on the internet was not necessarily up-to-date or correct, but they could trust the leaflets prepared by professionals.

In addition to promptly paying insurance claims, informing people about the support they can get, whether it’s relief supplies or public assistance programs, can help them feel a little better. It may not be enough, but by continuing to make progress, we can provide more empathetic support, closely aligned with victims’ needs.

That said, there are limits to what any single organization can accomplish. To realize our vision for disaster response, we need organic ways of linking our support to that provided by other companies, local authorities, public interest groups, NPOs and other organizations. Together, we can build an infrastructure that broadly supports society as a whole.

We should also look beyond the immediate aftermath of disasters, and toward forecasting and preparedness. In recent years, technology has improved the accuracy of disaster forecasting, which I would like to use to strengthen our damage mitigation measures.

External data such as satellite imagery can help us achieve our vision for disaster response. As an example, the resolution of satellite imagery used after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake was much higher than after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Using satellite imagery to identify damaged properties can be game-changing, for example to quickly determine how many employees and damage appraisers we should send and where exactly to send them.

Moreover, information about which areas are most affected and how well the evacuation centers are functioning would be valuable both to support organizations (like local governments) and to disaster victims themselves. As an insurance company, we can play a part in supporting social infrastructure by providing such information not only to our customers, but also to everyone throughout the affected areas.

We as frontline employees also used satellite imagery during the Noto Peninsula Earthquake and accompanying floods. We were able to quickly head out and assess the situation by identifying the areas we expected to be affected and checking if our customers had addresses in those areas.

By combining digital technology with the capabilities of frontline employees, I hope we can improve the speed and accuracy of support, and continue to strengthen our disaster response in the future.

Our highest priority is to provide value that exceeds our customers' expectations. One example of providing value beyond the boundaries of insurance was the Road Condition and Ground Fissure Map, which identified road closures and areas with difficult road conditions based on dashcam impact data. The map was made available to the public.

I will continue to promote initiatives that circulate our data in a way that is beneficial to customers and society as a whole.

I believe that co-creation will be an important keyword when developing services and solving social issues.

For instance, the Screenshot Disaster Prevention Service—the disaster prevention and evacuation resource provided by E.design Insurance—was verified by an academic expert in disaster prevention research to ensure reliability.

We can maximize the value of our services by working with experts and partner companies. Through such partnerships, I would like to continue advancing initiatives that will benefit as many people as possible.

Tools like Smart Supply, Road Condition and Ground Fissure Map, and Screenshot Disaster Prevention are meaningless if they cannot actually be used on site. As frontline employees, we need to fully understand and be prepared to use each tool and service at all times.

As a Group, I also want to test the practicality of new ideas and tools on the front lines. We can further improve the effectiveness and quality of our services by working with local governments, agents, customers and other stakeholders to verify the usability of our tools.

In addition, disaster victims tend to think about preparing for the next disaster based on their past experiences. People who have never experienced a disaster may find it difficult to imagine disasters as something that could happen to them. That’s why it’s essential for us on the front lines to share the experiences and lessons we learned in disaster areas and create an environment where every employee can think about and act autonomously toward better preparedness.

Tokio Marine Group wouldn’t be able to roll out the Road Condition and Ground Fissure Map and create relief platforms for disaster victims such as Smart Supply and Public Assistance Scheme Information (chatbot and leaflets) without the support of others. We rely on help from a wide range of stakeholders, including policyholders, companies, and local authorities.

Our aim is to develop a system where stakeholders collaborate smoothly, with a clear understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities. We can better support affected areas when all parties involved aim in the same direction and partner together.

In disaster response, there is a limit to how much relief individual companies and local authorities can provide on their own. If each company and organization is working only on what it can do, we can’t adequately rebuild victims’ livelihoods.

The value of the support we provide is greatly enhanced when companies and organizations partner well together, complementing each other’s expertise and accumulating "small exceptions", such as donations. We will continue to work hard to build a system that can provide a wide range of support so that victims can truly feel the value of our work.