SOMPO’s value creation using Real Data Platform
The Group is able to obtain various data from the frontline on a daily basis through the insurance and nursing care businesses. The most important feature of the data is that it is an accumulation of real information related to the behavior and daily life of customers, residents and users, in other words, “real data.” This real data with clear sources obtained from the actual society and people’s daily lives is necessary for addressing social challenges, and the real data is a “vast repository” for realizing the extremely unique and new business potential of Sompo. The Real Data Platform (hereinafter “RDP”) is a unique system of Sompo to create new solutions that contribute to security, health, and wellbeing by integrating and analyzing the extensive and vast amount of real data as the following examples demonstrate. I think that RDP is the most important key for the Group to realize sustainable and dramatic growth. I believe that the new solutions and ecosystems created by SOMPO by making full use of RDP are certain to deliver unprecedented size of value and contribute to society. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to have a partner with high technological capabilities to turn free thinking into reality and understands the future direction of the Group’s businesses to realize RDP.
We expect that Palantir Technologies Inc. (hereinafter “Palantir”) in the U.S. with which we are deepening relationships will fulfill such needs. Palantir is a group of professionals with the highest level of data analytics capability in the world and has provided advanced technology and services to organizations with highly complex and confidential data environments. What blew my mind more than their magnificent achievements was the encounter with Co-Founders Peter Thiel and Alexander Karp. I strongly empathized with their philosophy that superior technology should be used to make the world and people happy, and became convinced that there is no other way than to partner with such player and create new values for the Group to continue growing. Therefore, we formed a business alliance with Palantir, established a joint venture, and decided to carry out concrete initiatives.
Press conference on the establishment of a new company (November 2019)
From left to right, Koichi Narasaki, Group CDO of Sompo Holdings, Peter Thiel, Co-Founder and Chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., Kengo Sakurada, Group CEO of Sompo Holdings
As a result, the Group is finally ready to start full-scale development of RDP, a solution for delivering new values that can only be created by SOMPO by combining Palantir’s technology and valuable real data. In Japan, I believe that data utilization at the national level, including the My Number system, will steadily advance in the future. The Group will capture such trends and take on the challenge of building a unique business model by enhancing the quality and resilience of existing businesses while delivering new values through RDP. At the same time, it is important for management to draw a path for this business model using RDP to substantially contribute to Group profit. Contributing to addressing social challenges through business will generate profit for the Group in the future, which will be returned to society. By creating trends and markets for new values and supporting them with solid evidence, we will raise expectations and earn the trust of stakeholders, and eventually enhance the Group’s corporate value.
Realizing happiness through nursing care
One of the areas in which we are carrying out concrete initiative is the nursing care. Needless to say, nursing care is important and necessary, and it is definitely one of the social challenges that will become increasingly serious in the future. Nursing care costs continue to increase year by year, and have swollen to exceed 10 trillion yen recently. And it is estimated that this will reach 25 trillion yen by 2040, and the tight fiscal situation is a major concern in the future. Even more problematic is the supply-demand gap in frontline nursing care. The nursing care business has been facing labor shortage and the demand for nursing care is expected to increase further such that we may see demand for caregivers reach around 3 million in 2040, while the actual aggregate number was only 2.1 million in 2019, leading to a fairly serious situation. It is safe to say that this is an important topic and we must take action now to enable the people needing support as well as the people providing support to lead happy lives, and ensure future prosperity and happiness. Therefore, SOMPO decided first to take on the challenge of changing frontline nursing care. I think that one aspect of frontline nursing care has been a difficult place to work for employees with high principles having to rely heavily on their experience and skills to support residents and users through various ingenuity and hardship. However, if “visible nursing care” and “predictable nursing care” are realized by converting the accumulated valuable experience and daily detailed information of around 100,000 people, including employees working at facilities, residents and users, into data, it should help, for example, inexperienced employees in effectively providing the services needed. While adopting advanced technology in this way, we will create an environment where we can fully focus on providing warm services that only humans can and are truly needed in frontline nursing care. The vision of the Group is to support the realization of the mission of delivering happiness to residents and users as we should. PoC of a business model using RDP is already being carried out at facilities within the Group, and we aim to introduce it to all facilities by the end of FY2023. These know-how should be useful not only for the Group but also for many other nursing care providers suffering from labor shortages. I think it is possible to contribute to raising the level of the whole industry while expanding our business by proposing the Group’s business model as a service on a subscription-basis (member) to other providers supporting frontline nursing care for joint use.
Utilization of RDP in various areas, such as disaster prevention & mitigation
We are also making advance in the area of disaster prevention & mitigation which has high affinity with P&C insurance. Many earthquakes, heavy rains, and typhoons struck Japan in recent years and employees all over the country are working hard to fulfill our responsibilities as an insurance group. Also, we are preparing ahead in normal times at frontline nursing care for safety assurance and emergency evacuation to protect residents, and making thorough preparations so that we can respond promptly in the event of an emergency that is expected to affect the facility. And one of the most important things in dealing with disasters is to detect the danger as soon as possible and take effective measures. One Concern, Inc., a business partner of Sompo Japan, develops simulation technology that enables prediction of floods up to 72 hours in advance. The combination of this technology with the vast amount of data obtained through the Group’s approximately 20 million insurance policies should be a huge boost for practical application. Concrete plans are already being implemented, such as aiming to develop a flood prediction model for about 50 cities within this fiscal year. If cooperation with many local governments and companies realizes, evacuation instruction to local residents, damage prediction, disaster prevention planning in normal times, and sign detection will be enhanced and lead to better protection of invaluable lives and property.
In developing RDP, we will continue to bring service ideas into shape by assuming various situations, such as responding to the evolving society of autonomous driving and mobility, a mechanism to support farmers through global climate analysis, etc., and efforts to realize “healthy aging” where many people can live long and happily until the end of their lives.