Sony Life will also ask customers who signed contracts through its sales employees or exclusive agents if they noticed any suspicious activity during phone calls, letters or on dedicated customer webpages.
Sony Life is the first insurer to open such a large-scale investigation since Prudential Life Insurance Co.’s probe in August 2024.
The Prudential Life investigation revealed that 107 employees and former employees were involved in unauthorized financial transactions with 503 customers, and improperly obtained a total of about 3.1 billion yen ($20 million).
At Sony Life, the number of customers reporting losses or expressing concerns about potential misconduct has been increasing. In January, the company disclosed a case in which a solicitor who had been tranferred to an exclusive agent for Sony Life took money from customers under the pretense of investment and diverted it for personal use.
In March, the company revealed that a former sales employee had borrowed about 2.2 billion yen from 103 customers, of which about 1.2 billion yen remains unpaid.
Sony Life initially did not make this case public, treating it as “personal borrowing” by the former employee.
The company was established in 1979 as Sony Prudential Life Insurance Co. It later split from Prudential Life and became a separate company. Both Sony Life and Prudential Life employ sales staff known as “life planners” to sell insurance products.
And both companies have traditionally adopted a “full-commission” compensation system in which pay is directly linked to sales performance. Prudential Life has been reviewing its compensation structure on grounds that the link between pay and insurance sales performance was a contributing factor to the misconduct.
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