On Dec. 27, the top three executives of Japan Post Holdings Co. announced they would be resigning on Jan. 5 over the insurance sales scandal that first came to light more than a year and a half ago. The announcement comes on the heels of an order from the Financial Services Agency for subsidiaries of the firm to halt sales of insurance products for three months starting Jan. 1.

According to a Dec. 28 article in the Nishinippon Shimbun, the Financial Services Agency order and the resignations are way overdue. Under pressure from supervisors, salespeople were resorting to underhanded methods in order to meet strict sales quotas, which led to customers buying redundant policies or even paying for products they didn't know they had signed up for. Many victims told the newspaper that they have yet to receive refunds or an apology. In addition, rank-and-file employees of Japan Post Holdings said complaints continued to flood their offices even after the company announced the results of an internal investigation and admitted to wrongdoing. 

It was Japan's public broadcaster, NHK, who broke the story on its nightly in-depth news show, "Close-up Gendai Plus," on April 24, 2018. The program was soliciting further testimonials about the problem on its website and planned to run a follow-up report in August 2018. As it turned out, the follow-up didn't materialize when it was supposed to. Japan Post Holdings sent a letter addressed to then-NHK President Ryoichi Ueda on July 11, 2018, demanding that NHK remove some of the video content from the "Close-up Gendai Plus" website, saying it was inaccurate. Although the producers reportedly stood by the report, the videos were subsequently removed and the second installment was postponed.