The Life Insurance Plan
Selection System at
the Meiji Mutual Life Insurance Company
The Meiji Mutual Life Insurance Company, founded in 1881,
is one of the oldest life insurance companies in Japan with assets
of around UK £49 billion ($74 billion). Meiji offers a wide
range of insurance and pension products. In addition, the company
is aggressively involved in developing and introducing new products.
However, with the increasing number of products, the company was
finding it difficult to ensure that all the insurance sales staff
had the expertise and the latest knowledge required to provide the
best advice and service to the customers.
To overcome this problem, Meiji has used XpertRule to develop
the Life Insurance Plan Selection Expert system. The system can
select the most suitable product, along with a reason for the choice,
from Meiji's range of 37 individual oriented products.
Meiji began research into expert systems in 1986. Before using
XpertRule, the company had completed a Lisp-based insurance plan
selection system. This system, however, had a high delivery and
maintenance cost and was not suited for distribution to all branches.
Meiji was then introduced to XpertRule by Daiichi Computer Resources,
the distributors for XpertRule Software in Japan. Meiji decided to adopt
XpertRule because it allows for easy knowledge base construction.
The knowledge base developed contained 47 decision tasks. The
rules for selecting each plan were developed as a separate task.
The system was structured so that when the details of a customer
are entered, the system assesses the suitability of all the plans
and report on the best five. The system only takes 3 to 4 seconds
to make the suitable selections.
The Expert System is installed in Meiji's Tokyo service centre
and in all other service plazas across Japan. These centres act
as focal points for the company's life planning service. Customers
visiting these offices can select the products which are best suited
to their needs.
Meiji and its employees are very impressed by XpertRule. So much
so that one of Meiji's managers, Mr Hioshi Hirano, has written a
book on building applications using XpertRule (available in Kanji).
XpertRule Software products in Japan.
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