Former Prudential Life Employee Blames Sales-First Culture for 3.1 Billion Yen Scam

Become My Client

Basking in camera flashes, the executives bowed deeply. On January 23, ’26, Prudential Life Insurance held a press conference. On stage stood President Hiroshi Mabara (who resigned from responsibility effective February 1) and the company’s top management.

“We carried out confirmations with the resolve to root out all the corruption.”

According to the investigation, between 1991 and 2025, 107 current and former employees were involved in inappropriately receiving approximately 3.1 billion yen from 503 clients. Fabricated investment schemes and money lending had become routine.

As a powerhouse foreign-affiliated life insurer, Prudential had long boasted the title of strongest sales team, but why did such large-scale organizational misconduct occur? FRIDAY Digital obtained testimony from a former life planner (hereafter “A”), who is well-acquainted with the company’s inner workings. From their account, the distorted reality of an organization emerges: under the guise of a customer-centered sales style, lower-level employees were inevitably driven to misconduct.

Prudential Life planners (LPs), the company’s sales agents, are not merely insurance sellers. As President Mabara stated at the press conference,

“The concept of a single sales employee being responsible for a client for life — a ‘My Client’ approach — is the foundation of the relationship between the client and the sales employee,”

LPs are expected to serve as concierges, involved in virtually every aspect of a client’s life.

“Don’t just be an insurance salesperson. Become a life partner for your client. That’s what the company taught us. If a client has problems, even outside of insurance, we are expected to leverage our network to solve them. That is what makes an LP excellent” (A).

The job of a skilled concierge is to meet every conceivable request from clients.

“For example, if a client says, ‘I want a Mercedes G-Class,’ we connect them to a used car dealer. If they say, ‘I want an entire condominium building,’ we introduce a real estate agent. By acting as a hub connecting people, we earn the client’s trust, which ultimately leads to an insurance contract. The company praised this style, telling us to expand your network and find potential clients” (A).

However, this style created a risky environment: LPs deeply intervening in clients’ assets in areas where the company had no oversight. Coupled with a distorted compensation structure, this concierge system eventually exposed its flaws.

The existence of employees with immense power

Why did so many LPs end up engaging in inappropriate monetary acceptance? Behind it lay a far more serious structural problem. Prudential has a top-tier position called “Executive Life Planner” (Ex-LP). These individuals are almost deified within the company and sometimes wield power that even the management cannot interfere with. A explained:

“I think one hidden cause of this scandal lies in decisions made by the ‘Ex-LP Council,’ composed of these executives.”

“About five years ago, an agenda came up at the Ex-LP Council. It was: ‘The quality of younger employees is declining. Shouldn’t we tighten hiring and focus on elites?’ But another Ex-LP raised a completely different concern: ‘Wait, what happens to our bonuses?’” (A)

At Prudential, employee compensation has two layers: sales commissions earned per insurance policy sold (“sales rewards”) and bonuses added based on performance. The problem lies in how these bonuses are calculated. The bonuses are determined by a unique system based on the company-wide average compensation.

According to A, if an Ex-LP sells twice the company-wide average, they receive an enormous bonus amounting to about 80% of that sales revenue, on top of their regular sales rewards. In other words, the more low-performing employees there are, the lower the overall average becomes, making it easier for top performers to meet the twice the average bonus threshold.

“Since underperforming employees kept leaving, only elite salespeople remained, raising the overall average compensation. At its peak, the average compensation was around 9 million yen. At that point, it became difficult to exceed twice the average for bonus calculation. So, the Ex-LP Council shared the intention to increase headcount, even if quality was low, and the company went along with that. As a result, a large number of low-quality employees were hired.” (A)

But why could ordinary sales employees distort hiring policies so significantly? A explained Prudential’s power dynamics:

“Within the company, Executives are like gods or grand champions. They have enough influence to intervene in personnel decisions of the company’s top management. For example, while subordinates normally report to their managers, in practice the roles were reversed. Branch managers (mid-level supervisors) would actually go to the seat of a younger Ex-LP and bow, saying, ‘Excuse me, may I have last week’s activity report?’ Mid-level management was seen as those who didn’t shine as salespeople, while high-earning Ex-LPs were considered absolute justice. In an environment where superiors kowtow to subordinates, governance simply cannot function.” (A)

Use your brain for side jobs

After their third year at the company, LPs lose their fixed salary, and their compensation becomes tied entirely to performance. Although the legal minimum wage is guaranteed, LPs must cover all expenses out of their own pockets, including transportation, client entertainment, and gifts. A gave an example of a young LP earning about 4 million yen per year.

“Even if someone earns 4 million yen a year, once you deduct the large activity expenses, there isn’t enough left to live on. One young LP confided their financial struggles to a branch manager, and was told, ‘Earning isn’t only about insurance. Use your brain for side jobs.’ Whether it’s real estate, investments, or otherwise, the message was to leverage connections and think creatively to make money. Employees pressured this way ended up proposing investment schemes to clients to collect money, or getting involved in shady deals for referral fees.” (A)

At the January 23 press conference, President Hiroshi Mabara also acknowledged explicitly:

“The instability of income contributed to inappropriate actions.”

The network of connections cultivated as a concierge had been distorted into a mechanism for improper collections for survival.

In fact, most of the individuals identified in the investigation were reportedly underperforming. However, A noted that among the 107 employees deemed to have engaged in misconduct:

“There were a few executives included who were among the top earners in the company.”

“There’s a range, but Ex-LPs earn around 50 million yen a year. They wouldn’t risk that position just for referral fees.”

So why were they deemed to have engaged in misconduct?

“The concierge system itself has a built-in pitfall. For example, if a top client requests a Ferrari worth 30 million yen, and an LP in good faith introduces a known used car dealer, what happens if that dealer absconds with the money or goes bankrupt and the car isn’t delivered? From the client’s perspective, it’s your referral, isn’t it? In this investigation, such incidents were counted as inappropriate monetary issues. Ultimately, excellent LPs, because of their excellence, respond to many client requests, and as a result, get caught up in referral-related troubles that happened purely by chance.”

“The company told them to use their connections, but may have shifted the responsibility for any resulting troubles onto the individual employees.”

No such facts exist

FRIDAY Digital asked Prudential Life Insurance about these matters. Regarding the Exe-Kai’s intervention in employee recruitment, the company responded:

“No such facts exist.”

On whether any executives were among the former employees found to have committed misconduct:

“We will refrain from commenting on the details of our employees and former employees listed in the public announcement.”

Regarding the suggestion of side jobs by supervisors, the company denied it:

“We have no knowledge of such facts.”

They also declined to comment on the compensation system. Concerning whether troubles at referral destinations were counted as misconduct:

“This includes cases where clients were introduced to investment products or operators not approved under internal regulations.”

The company added that if new damage claims from clients arise:

“We will conduct appropriate investigations.”

Regarding this position, A said that as a company, they can only answer no such facts exist, but countered:

“Executives participate in the Exe-Kai. In that Exe-Kai, discussions were held about increasing headcount to maintain bonuses, and there is no doubt that this intention was shared with the company. As for side jobs, internal regulations prohibit them. However, in the past few years, younger managers who have become branch heads lack moral awareness, and in order to avoid penalties for their hiring responsibilities, they have guided staff with instructions like don’t quit, survive with side jobs. This reality definitely exists.” (A)

At the January 23 press conference, the company emphasized that they had drained the pus. They claim it is the result of over 30 years of investigation since 1991, but A offers a different perspective:

“The company says it is cumulative since 1991, but in reality, a significant number of cases likely occurred in recent years when the quality of employees sharply declined. From my own experience, the 107 cases seem too few. There is probably much more misconduct that remains hidden.”

The powerful network with clients that supported the strongest sales force was a unique corporate culture. However, it undeniably blurred the line between public and private boundaries and lowered ethical standards.

This scandal may well be the inevitable result of institutional fatigue—the concierge system that made Prudential the strongest could not be updated to match the changing circumstances.