On 10 Dec 2018, our CEO, Kazy Hata, has been invited by Professor Nakaide of Waseda University to speak in the insurance seminar.

Professor Nakaide Satoshi

Professor Nakaide is specialized in insurance law including law on the regulation of insurance business and has published a number of books and articles on insurance. He had 28-year work experience in the Tokio Marine Insurance Company and research experience in overseas universities including LSE, University of Cambridge, University of Exeter, Max-Plank Foreign Law International Private Law Research of Institute. He is particularly interested in international regulations for insurance such as Marine insurance and reinsurance. Currently, he is the Vice Chairman of Marine Insurance WG of the International Association of Insurance Law (AIDA) and the Executive Director of the International Academy of Financial Consumers (IAFICO). He has been internationally active and has conducted plenty of presentations in many countries.

Professor Nakaide kindly gave Kazy his autographed book.

Kazy talked about himself, about the company, and recent trends in the insurance industry, and answered questions from the students.

Summary of Q&A Session between

Q: It’s about risk scoring. As you have mentioned, the pricing of insurance is determined in accordance with criteria of insured based on data analyses. While data can be collected, how to actually understand and then utilize it?

Certainly, it’s hard to understand what the collected data means, especially for a short period of time. But, by collecting the daily risk score over the 90 days, we can then converge the data into understanding of how the person is treating his smartphone.

Q: You have said that you would like insurance to be gone. Would you mind explaining about it further?

I am trying to promote healthy lifestyle through insurance. When health checks such as by number of walking steps is tracked on smartphone apps, insurance premiums can be potentially cheaper. Since it’s scientifically proven that exercising makes people healthier. then let’s motivate people to do more exercises and be rewarded by cheaper premiums. If customers manage to motivate themselves well, they will become healthier and the possibility for them to claim the insurance would be lower. Moreover, for the insurers, they are also satisfied as they are not obliged to pay insurance claims. Til now there are many cases that insurers are labeled with an unpleasant image by customers. Instead of such a win-lose relationship, I am pursuing a win-win relationship.

Q:Data collection is very important, while for Amazon and LINE they can quickly collect the data needed, how about for insurance companies?

By means of Insurance API. We do not plan to work as a platform like Google, Yahoo, Facebook. Instead, we aim to jointly exist with those platforms as their API provider. I hope the insurance API can become commonly used. For now there’s still no related business and while our company is still small-sized with limited talents, infrastructure and money, we are working hard with speed and guts. We are not here to compete in those well-grounded large businesses. A startup is where to create something that no one is doing.

Q: If Mr. Hata returned to be 20-year-old, would there be anything that you would have done?

I would like to study various languages and make friends. Even now as I am struggling with the Chinese language. Also, I have created a debating circle when I was a student, I have tried to do something and involved people in. It’s also good for you to be a part-time leader, just try to do something by your own lead. You might encounter a lot of difficulties and incline to quit, yet involving other people it might then make you not able to quit and keep going. If you have time, organizing events is also a good idea to start with. Recently I have been talking with different students, Tokyo’s students have truly high awareness. There are students who quit school for a year and try to start their own businesses, and not necessary to attempt the same level yet just try to start to work on creating something new than just concerning TOEIC scores.