On top of conventional insurance benefits, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance has started to provide its customers with services to help them avoid illness as well as to help them live with a disease if they do fall ill. The company is thus embracing challenges in a new domain by combining insurance with health support.

Meiji Yasuda is proactively implementing a QOL support program to help customersin their health improvement efforts , prevent disease and live better even if they do get sick. QOL stands for “quality of life” and is a subjective measure that each person and family evaluate based on their own criteria. It is a concept promoted in healthcare as enabling individuals to lead fulfilling lives in their own way. Through the QOL support program, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance combines insurance with health support services in consideration of the characteristics of the targeted diseases, thereby helping customers prepare against such conditions and continue to find fulfillment even if they acquire them.

The QOL support program has three features. First, it aims to provide customers with special insurance and health support services for combatting serious diseases, including cancers, cardiovascular diseases, dementia, and health conditions for which long-term care is needed. The services offered through the program include support for disease prevention and for post-treatment rehabilitation. Second, the program makes use of evidence gathered and findings made in co-creation activities that Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance has conducted with local governments, medical institutions and other companies, including joint research with universities and medical facilities and partnerships with local governments and other companies. Third, the program enables Meiji Yasuda to support customers by working closely with them. Specifically, MY Link Coordinators (sales personnel)work closely with customers both when they are healthy and after they contract a disease to help them to understand the details of the insurance and health support services provided by the insurer and to make sure they receive the insurance benefits and services they are entitled to as needed. Chihiro Kaneko, deputy manager member of the company’s Healthcare Business Planning Office, explains the program as follows:

“We are offering more value by adding both pre-disease and post-treatment support on top of conventional insurance benefits, thereby expanding the scope of the roles to be played by us as a life insurance company. We are aiming to implement a program that helps customers enhance their health, prevent disease and receive treatment when contracting a disease so that they can continue to live with peace of mind.”

For the QOL support program, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance makes effective use of evidence gathered and findings made through joint research that it has conducted with universities and medical institutions. For example, the company concluded a comprehensive partnership agreement and joint research agreement with the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center in 2021, which, in a first for the financial industry, led to the establishment in fiscal 2023 of a joint research department called the Department of Quality of Life Assurance with Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Management (QLAP). Meiji Yasuda has since been promoting joint research with the Center through the Department.

“It is already three years since the conclusion of the agreements,” says Ms. Kaneko, “and we have been able to perform a range of data analyses and build a predictive model. And several papers have already been published by QLAP researchers. We are making effective use of the research results for our new insurance product, Cardiovascular disease prevention Pro and to which we have added more value through the QOL support program.”

Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance is of course also promoting cooperation with other companies, and its current partners include NISSIN FOOD PRODUCTS CO., LTD., OMRON HEALTHCARE Co., Ltd. and startups in the healthcare industry. Saki Sueyoshi, deputy manager member of the Healthcare Business Planning Office, explains such collaboration as follows:

“In order to deliver the kind of value that we cannot offer on our own to our customers, we need to cooperate and partner with other organizations. In addition to supporting customers financially by providing insurance benefits, we are committed to serving them by working closely with them both when they are healthy and when they are ill and to providing them with services that are tailor-made for their individual health conditions. To this end, we aim to promote partnerships with universities, medical institutions, other companies and local governments in order to offer new value widely to our customers.”

For example, services offered exclusively to policyholders of the company’s cardiovascular disease insurance product include the “Meiji Yasuda blood vessel report,” which is created based on health checkup results submitted by the policyholder. The report shows the status of the person’s blood vessels, predicts their risk of developing cardiovascular disease based on their health checkup results and provides information that they can use to improve their lifestyle. The “emergency communication to families” service is also available to policyholders. In the event a policyholder is raced to hospital due to a cardiovascular event and is unconscious or in a critical condition, the company will inform the patient’s family members and help them make timely decisions about necessary medical treatment.

“I want as many customers as possible to lead long, healthy and happy lives, without having to worry about financial issues,” says Ms. Sueyoshi. “We are partnering with organizations that share this ideal and that want to solve social issues together with us. We have exchanged views with these organizations repeatedly and thought about what we could do by capitalizing on our own strengths and those of our partners. The QOL support program is one of the fruits of these efforts.”

Regarding the needs that the company wanted to meet that led to the birth of the new product, Ms. Kaneko says the following:

“Of the three major types of disease, namely cancer, heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, many people understand the seriousness of cancer. For the other two types, however, people tend to brush them off, unable to imagine that they may one day be affected. It really is important to detect a cancer as early as possible. But you could also lose your life to a cardiovascular disease if you got one and it worsened without your knowledge before you developed symptoms. Conversely, you can prevent a cardiovascular disease from progressing if you know you have it and seek treatment. We therefore want to help our customers make this kind of early detection and improve their lifestyles. We thought we might be able to provide new value as a life insurance company by implementing a program to this end.”

Many people are unaware of the seriousness of cardiovascular disease. Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance is therefore using its agency channel to help more people become aware of their potential needs. Last October, the company also started to broadcast a new TV commercial to communicate its corporate message through the introduction of the QOL support program. The commercial features football player Kazuyoshi Miura and the song “wonderful life” by singer-songwriter Kazumasa Oda. With this commercial, Meiji Yasuda makes a commitment to fulfilling new roles through its QOL support program beyond the framework of the conventional role of a life insurance provider.

The company’s QOL support program has been a very ambitious and challenging initiative, with Cardiovascular disease prevention Pro taking three years to launch. Not viewing the current framework as its final form, Ms. Kaneko wants to develop the program further as well as think about creating new products for other types of diseases. “The services that we presently offer under the program are rather limited,” she says, “while the health conditions and other attributes of our customers can be very different. In order to meet the needs of all our customers, we would like to expand our services, for which we want to cooperate and partner with more parties.”

Ms. Sueyoshi chimes in with the following message to readers:

“For serious social issues that our company cannot solve on its own, we would like to cooperate with other companies and external organizations for their resolution. We also want to exchange views with other Mitsubishi Group companies if there is something that we can address together for the solution of social issues.”

Prevention of cardiovascular disease by KARUSHIOH & Introduction of regional delicacies by four professional golfers sponsored by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance

Two events were held concurrently at the Meiji Yasuda Gallery in Meiji Yasuda Village Marunouchi on January 15. One was a showcase of regional delicacies organized to promote the respective regions and the other was an event to raise awareness of cardiovascular disease.

At the opening of the awareness-raising event, Dr. Takeshi Kitai from the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center appeared on stage with President Nagashima and Deputy President Nakamura of Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance to introduce KARUSHIOH, which is a new approach recommended by the Center to reduce dietary salt intake without compromising on taste.

According to Dr. Kitai, “cardiovascular organs” include the heart, which circulates blood around the body, as well as the arteries, veins, brain and kidney. He also said that high blood pressure is one of the major causes of cardiac and cerebral infarction. Salt has a big impact on blood pressure, and the doctor explained that it is therefore important to limit our intake of salt to prevent cardiovascular disease. “It is widely recognized that cancer is the major cause of death among Japanese people, but many cancers these days can be cured,” he said. “Meanwhile, deaths due to cardiovascular diseases such as cardiac and cerebral infarction have been growing at a faster rate than those due to cancer.”

“The number of patients suffering from cardiovascular disease is more than four times that of patients with cancer,” said President Nagashima. “This poses a social challenge, but we can prevent the risk of contracting such diseases by improving our lifestyle.” He also explained the approach taken by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance, adding, “We can play an even greater role in this regard and would like to contribute to the solution of social issues by adding more services to our products.”

Professional golfers Minami Katsu, Haruka Amamoto, Karen Tsuruoka and Sae Ogura, who are all sponsored by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance, then appeared on stage to introduce delicacies from their home regions (Kagoshima Prefecture, Fukuoka Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture and Okayama Prefecture, respectively), which they did by speaking in their local dialects. Further, President Nagashima and Deputy President Nakamura of the company joined them to communicate the attractiveness of the prefectures.

At the Meiji Yasuda Gallery, local delicacies from the four prefectures were put on display and KARUSHIOH-certified products were also introduced to visitors to raise their awareness of the importance of cutting their salt intake. Visitors enjoyed free samples and purchased products that were available for sale.