Tokyo, Japan - (13 September 2019) – Daniel Neo, Regional Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sompo Holdings Asia (Sompo Asia), headquartered in Singapore, announced new leadership appointments and regional initiatives across the Asia Pacific (APAC), focusing on company strategy, travel and digital today. Speaking from the Sompo Holdings head office in Tokyo, along with members from his senior leadership team, Mr. Neo emphasized the regional aspirations of being number 1 in Travel insurance and Top 5 in Motor insurance in ASEAN, as well as reaching a USD100m profit by 2023. As a member of the Sompo Holdings group, the 14 markets under Sompo Asia Pacific contributed 5% to the group’s global gross written premiums in the year of 2018.

Newly appointed this year, Chayanna Siripirom – CEO of Sompo Insurance Thailand, Pui Phusangmook – CEO of Sompo Insurance Singapore, and Yasuhiro Sasanuma – Regional Chief Operating Officer joined the expanded APAC leadership team under Mr. Neo, who was also announced as the new Regional CEO this April.

With Travel being one of the top priorities and Sompo as a strong trusted Japanese insurance brand, Sompo Asia has launched a new Travel insurance product, Go JAPAN by TravelJoy (Go JAPAN), across the region with notable coverage to enhance the experience in Japan. An upward trend in inbound travellers to Japan is expected within these 2 years, especially during major seasonal and sporting events. Go JAPAN is currently visible in Singapore and Thailand, and will be made available to the rest of the Asian markets in 2020. Partnering with NAVITIME JAPAN Co., Ltd. (NAVITIME) – a leading provider of navigation technology and services in Japan – Sompo Asia Travel insurance customers get to enjoy the full contents and features of the Japan Travel mobile app by NAVITIME for free, including Sompo Asia-exclusive coupons and travel assistance information. The multilingual app is available in English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Thai.

“Sompo is still a fairly new brand outside Japan for direct consumers. Therefore, we are focused on driving our brand awareness, building a strong retail platform throughout Asia, and continuing to provide solutions to our stakeholders,” said Sompo Asia CEO, Daniel Neo. “Considering the said focuses and our Travel aspiration, Go JAPAN Travel insurance provides comprehensive coverage to our customers visiting Japan by offering cashless medical assistance, free real-time translation services by a human voice, and now, additional travel perks from our partnership with NAVITIME.”

Collaborating with NAVITIME is a good example of how Sompo Asia complements digital technology with human interaction to cater to our customers’ needs. The Sompo Holdings group has invested vastly on digital and insurtech development globally to meet the demand for increasingly digitized insurance experience and to better equip the employees with the tools to improve our service. One of the recent initiatives is the Asia Digital Open Innovation Program, a regional crowdsourcing model whereby the Sompo Asia Digital team works closely with the InfoComm Media Development Authority in Singapore to connect and match challenges of Problem Owners with a pool of Problem Solvers with technological innovations.

Another digital technology initiative that the Sompo Asia Digital team, together with Sompo Insurance Singapore, has been spearheading since October 2018 is detecting fraudulent claims using Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). This workflow uses the machine learning approach to corroborate claims data input by experienced human experts, resulting in a more standardized and efficient claims process. Engaging in AI Singapore’s 100 Experiments program, Sompo Asia also uses this project as a talent development platform to recognize and build our own A.I. team.

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