More than 2.5 million sets of customer information at four major Japanese nonlife insurers has leaked through insurance agents and employees sent on loan to such agents, sources have said.
Of the total, employees on loan were found to have been involved in about 240,000 cases, including for contracts for corporate customers.
The four firms — Sompo Japan Insurance, Tokio Marine and Nichido Fire Insurance, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance — are alleged to have obtained information on rival companies' customers inappropriately in part through employees dispatched to insurance agents.
The four insurers submitted their respective reports on the outcomes of their investigations into the irregularities to the Financial Services Agency on Friday.
Based on the reports, the FSA plans to probe the misconduct in detail, eyeing the possibility of slapping the firms with administrative penalties.
The submission of the reports followed orders the agency issued to the four companies under the insurance business law.
As of Friday, the number of cases in which information was leaked by employees sent on loan to agents stood at about 126,000 at Sompo Japan, about 100,000 at Tokio Marine, 128 at Mitsui Sumitomo and 12,339 at Aioi Nissay Dowa, according to the reports.
The information included the names and addresses of policyholders at rival insurers, and their contract periods. The insurance companies learned about rivals' shares and other data through the fraudulently obtained information and used the data for their marketing activities.
Meanwhile, insurance agents, including automobile dealers, leaked a total of about 2,266,000 sets of customer information to the four companies — about 865,000 to Sompo Japan, some 860,000 to Tokio Marine, roughly 336,200 to Mitsui Sumitomo and some 204,800 to Aioi Nissay Dowa.
A series of malpractices have been detected in the nonlife insurance industry, such as collusion to fix premiums for insurance contracts for corporate clients.