All 4 Major Japanese Life Insurers Log Higher Revenues

Tokyo, May 26 (Jiji Press)–All four major Japanese life insurance firms enjoyed year-on-year growth in insurance premium income in fiscal 2025, which ended in March, according to their earnings reports released by Tuesday. Higher interest rates pushed up sales of single-premium whole life insurance products. Consolidated premium and other revenue rose 20.0 pct to 9,437.3 billion yen at Nippon Life Insurance Co., 2.1 pct to 6,944 billion yen at Daiichi Life Group Inc., 32.5 pct to 4,528.7 billion yen at Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co. and 10.5 pct to 3,760.3 billion yen at Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. Nippon Life and Sumitomo Life logged record-high core business profits thanks to higher interest and dividend incomes from securities investments. By contrast, Daiichi Life’s core profit fell due to an increase in insurance payments by overseas subsidiaries. Latent losses on domestic bonds, including those bought when interest rates were low, expanded, totaling about 14 trillion yen at the four companies. Nippon Life booked 70 billion yen in related impairment losses at the end of March. At a press conference Tuesday, Nippon Life Executive Vice President Naoki Akahori said that the company’s fiscal 2025 earnings were not necessarily very strong because the results were backed by rosy financial markets. “Concerns linger in the market,” Sumitomo Life Senior Managing Executive Officer Nobuji Takao said of Middle East tensions. The firm’s earnings could be affected depending on future developments in the situation, he warned. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]