Proposal of Visualising Model of Customer Demands Sufficiency Degree in Designing Private Life Insurance

Abstract

Since May 2016, customers’ demands confirmation at the time of life insurance solicitation was strengthened by the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA). It requires not only confirming what the customer is requiring, but also to realize what is required through the insurance plan proposal. To realize this, life insurance companies must firstly understand their customers’ needs and then need to show how the it can be realized through the proposed insurance plan as well as how it matches with their own needs. This means that both customer needs and the matching between these needs with the proposal must be visualized. The visualisation can be realized by using a three-dimensional model which contains time, space, and products axes. These three axes represent the elements of insurance products, where time represents 'when' the insured will deserve the benefits and space represents 'for what' the insured will deserve the benefits. The customer’s insurance expectation is, in other words, a clarification of the function which a customer is expecting out of entire functions of this insurance. This clarification of required insurance functions leads to identification of that customer’s insurance demands. Therefore, the three-dimensional model can be used to visualize both what the insurance can do as well as the customer’s own demands.

This paper aims to propose a visualised, three-dimensional model which represents the structure, essence, and the concept of insurance. The three-dimensional model is a model which enables the visualization of sufficiency degrees of customer demands that could be invisible in most of the cases. Each axis of the three-dimensions represents the function of insurance. The visualising model of customer demands sufficiency degree enables a comprehension of the function of insurance in public social security, private life/non-life insurance, and customer demands point of view. Through the process of understanding insurance as a system by using this model, people will understand how can insurance support their financial risk and find out what they should and should not expect for private life insurance products.

Through the result of several workshops and interviews with professionals and a life insurance specialist in order to evaluate the model, it was proven that the model helped in understanding the features and functions of life insurance, and participants could better understand their needs of insurance. Additionally, they had the impression that life insurance is something valuable and will be of benefit for future financial risks.