<figure id="attachment_455508" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-455508" style="width: 5472px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="eb65754b"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/01/5debc6f0ba0880c3cb8551f1b93af685.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-455508" class="wp-caption-text">Prudential Life Insurance President Hiroshi Mabara (second from left) at a press conference on January 23.</figcaption></figure>
<h2><span class="strongInContent"> Be &#8216;My Client.</span></h2>
<p> The management team bowed deeply as they were flashed.&#8217; A press conference held by Prudential Life Insurance on January 23, 26. Lined up on stage were the company&#8217;s top management, including President Hiroshi Mabara (who resigned on February 1).</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> We have been checking the situation with the determination to purge all the pus from the company.</span></p>
<p> According to the results of the investigation, 107 employees and former employees were involved in the improper receipt of a total of approximately 3.1 billion yen from 503 clients between 1991 and 2025. Fictitious investment stories and borrowing of money were said to have become the norm.</p>
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<p> How did such a large-scale organizational deviation occur at the company, which has been enjoying a reputation as the &#8220;strongest sales group&#8221; as a leading foreign life insurance company? Friday Digital obtained the testimony of a former life planner (Mr. A) who is well versed in the inner workings of the company. From this testimony, we uncovered a distorted reality of an organization where, behind the sales style of being close to customers, employees at the end of the line inevitably engage in misconduct.</p>
<p> Prudential Life&#8217;s salespeople, known as &#8220;Lifeplanners&#8221; (LPs), do more than simply sell insurance. At a press conference, President Hiroshi Mabara said,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The concept of &#8220;My Client,&#8221; in which one sales representative is in charge of a customer for the entire life of the customer, is the basis of the relationship between the customer and the sales representative,&#8221; said Hiroshi Mabara, President and CEO of Prudential Life.</span></p>
<p> As President Hiroshi Mabara stated at the press conference, &#8220;The concept of &#8216;My Client&#8217; is the basis of the relationship between a client and a salesperson.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> Don&#8217;t just be an insurance salesman. Be a partner in the customer&#8217;s life. That&#8217;s what the company teaches us. If a customer has a problem, we use our network of contacts in areas other than insurance to solve it. That was considered the sign of an &#8216;excellent LP'&#8221; (Mr. A).</span></p>
<p> The job of an excellent &#8220;concierge&#8221; is to be able to respond to all kinds of requests.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> For example, if a client said, &#8216;I want a Mercedes-Benz Gelénde,&#8217; they would go to a used car dealer. For example, if a customer says, &#8216;I want a Mercedes-Benz slope,&#8217; we introduce him to a used car dealer. By becoming a hub connecting people in this way, we win the trust of our clients, which ultimately leads to insurance contracts. The company also praised this style, saying, &#8216;Expand your network and find potential customers.</span></p>
<p> However, this style created a dangerous environment in which <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;LPs intervened deeply in clients&#8217; assets where the company was not involved.</span> Combined with a distorted compensation system, this &#8220;concierge system&#8221; was exposed for the flaws it was.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" What is the &quot;Executive Committee&quot;?"></div>
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<h2><span class="strongInContent">The existence of employees with immense power</span></h2>
<p> Why did so many LPs engage in &#8220;improper receipt of money&#8221;? There was a more serious structural problem in the background. Prudential has the highest position of &#8220;executive life planner. They are deified within the company, and sometimes even management is not allowed to speak to them,&#8221; said Mr. A. &#8220;The &#8216;Executive Life Planner&#8217; group, which consists of these people, is called the &#8216;Executive Life Planner&#8217; group,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Mr. A. points out, &#8220;I think one of the hidden causes of this incident is the decisions made by the &#8216;Executive Committee,&#8217; which is made up of the executive life planners.</span></p>
<p> Mr. A points out, &#8220;I think one of the hidden causes of this incident is the decisions made by the &#8216;Executive Committee,&#8217; which consists of these people.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> About five years ago, the Executive Committee discussed an issue: &#8220;The quality of young people is declining. The quality of young people has been declining. Shouldn&#8217;t we narrow down the recruitment and make them more elite? However, another executive expressed a completely different concern. He said, &#8216;Wait a minute. What about our bonuses?&#8217; &#8216; (Mr. A).</span></p>
<p> Prudential&#8217;s salary is based on a two-tiered system: a sales commission, or &#8220;sales remuneration,&#8221; for each insurance policy sold, and a &#8220;bonus&#8221; that is added to the commission based on the sales performance. The problem lies in the way this bonus is determined. The bonus is determined based on the &#8220;average compensation of all employees,&#8221; according to a special system.</p>
<p> According to Mr. A, if an employee sells twice the average of all employees, a huge bonus equivalent to 80% of that amount is added on top, in addition to the sales compensation. In other words, the larger the number of employees who do not sell well, the lower the overall average (hurdle) and the easier it is for the top tier to meet the &#8220;twice the average&#8221; bonus standard.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Since &#8220;unsuccessful employees are leaving in droves, only the elite will remain in the company, and the overall average compensation will rise. At its highest point, the average compensation was about 9 million yen. This made it difficult to exceed &#8220;twice the average,&#8221; which was the standard for calculating bonuses. So, the Executive Committee shared the intention of &#8220;increasing the number of employees,&#8221; even if the level was low, and the company took this intention into account, resulting in a large number of low-quality employees being hired.</span></p>
<p> Mr. A describes the balance of power at Prudential.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> Mr. A explains the balance of power at Prudential as follows: &#8220;Executives are the &#8216;gods&#8217; and &#8216;yokozuna&#8217; within the company. They have so much influence that they can even interfere in the personnel matters of the company&#8217;s senior management. For example, it is natural for subordinates to report work to their superiors, but in the field, the situation was reversed. The director (manager) would go all the way to the seat of a younger executive and bow to him, saying, &#8216;Excuse me, I&#8217;d like a list of the results of last week&#8217;s activities, please. It is because the executives who earn money are the ones who are absolutely righteous while those who are in management positions are considered &#8216;half-arsed&#8217; who did not budge as salespeople. Governance cannot work in an environment where the boss is beholden to his subordinates.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Inappropriate collection device"></div>
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<h2><span class="strongInContent">Use your head on the sidelines.&#8221;</span></h2>
<p> After the third year of employment, fixed salaries disappear from LPs, and compensation is linked to performance. Mr. A cites the example of a young LP with an annual salary of around 4 million yen.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He cites the example of a young LP with an annual income of around 4 million yen: &#8220;Even if you say 4 million yen a year, if you deduct the large amount of expenses for activities from that, the money left over is not enough to live on. When one of the younger LPs told the branch manager that he was having a hard time making ends meet, he was told, &#8216;Insurance is not the only way to make money. You should use your head and get a second job. Whether it is real estate or investment, use your connections and use your head to make money. Employees who are cornered in such a way end up receiving money from customers for investment or participating in shady investment talks for referral fees,&#8221; said Mr. A. &#8220;This is a real situation.</span></p>
<p> (Mr. A) In response to this situation, at a press conference held on January 23, President Mabara also commented, &#8220;The instability of income is a major reason for the inappropriate behavior,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;The instability of his income led to inappropriate behavior.</span></p>
<p> In response to this reality, President Mabara clearly admitted at a press conference on January 23 that &#8220;the unstable income led to inappropriate behavior. The network of contacts he had cultivated as a concierge was transformed into an &#8220;inappropriate money collection device&#8221; for his own survival.</p>
<p> In fact, the majority of the wrongdoers identified in this investigation are believed to have been poor performers. However, Mr. A was among the 107 people who were found to have committed fraud,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;Some of the top earning executives in the company were among the 107 people who were found to have committed fraud.</span></p>
<p> He said.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;There is a wide range, but the annual income of the exe is about 50 million yen. They would never risk giving up their positions for a referral fee.</span></p>
<p> So why were they found to be dishonest?</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> There are pitfalls in the concierge system itself. For example, a fat client asked for a Ferrari for 30 million yen, and we introduced him to a used car dealer we knew in good faith. What happens if the dealer absconds with the money or goes bankrupt and does not deliver the car? The customer would say, &#8216;It was your introduction, wasn&#8217;t it? This kind of trouble is also counted as &#8216;inappropriate financial trouble&#8217; in this survey. After all, a good LP, because of his/her excellence, responds to the requests of many clients, and as a result, gets caught up in the troubles of referrals that happen to occur by chance.&#8221;</span></p>
<p> While telling them to &#8220;use their connections,&#8221; the company could have placed the responsibility for any trouble that occurred there on the individual.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Prudential Life&#39;s response was."></div>
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<figure id="attachment_455510" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-455510" style="width: 8192px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="288e707a"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/01/0f656bbf2430467c6224c492487689e4.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-455510" class="wp-caption-text">Management apologizing. (from left) Shintaro Shinohara, Hiromitsu Tokumaru, Bradford O&#8217;Hearn, Hiroshi Mabara, and Ryo Nagase</figcaption></figure>
<h2><span class="strongInContent"> There is no such fact.&#8221;</span></h2>
<p> Friday Digital asked Prudential Life about these facts. What about the intervention by the Executive Committee in the hiring of employees?</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> No such fact exists.</span></p>
<p> As to whether or not the Executive Board was involved in the hiring of some of the former employees who committed fraud, Friday Digital asked Prudential Life whether there was any such intervention,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The company responded, &#8220;We will refrain from providing details of the employees and former employees mentioned in the public statement.</span></p>
<p> The company responded, &#8220;We will refrain from providing details of the employees and former employees mentioned in the public statement. As for the suggestion of side jobs by supervisors, the company responded, &#8220;We are not aware of any such suggestion,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;We are not aware of any such suggestion.</span></p>
<p> He denied that he was aware of any such suggestion by his supervisor. As for the remuneration system, the company declined to answer. As for whether or not the problems that occurred at the company&#8217;s referral sources were included in the fraud case, he replied, &#8220;We are not aware of any such cases,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He explained, &#8220;This includes cases in which we introduced customers to investment products and their brokers, which are not permitted under our internal rules.</span></p>
<p> He explained, &#8220;This includes cases where we introduced to customers investment products and their dealers that are not permitted by our internal rules. If there is a new report of damage from a customer, we will conduct an appropriate investigation,&#8221; he said,</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;We will conduct an appropriate investigation.</span></p>
<p> The company&#8217;s position is that &#8220;the company will conduct an appropriate investigation&#8221; in the event of new reports of damage from customers. Mr. A responded, &#8220;The company will have no choice but to answer, &#8216;There is no such thing.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent">The executives also participate in the Exe-meetings. There is no doubt that at that Executives&#8217; Meeting, there was a discussion about &#8216;increasing the number of people to maintain bonuses,&#8217; and that this intention was shared with the company. As for side jobs, of course, they are prohibited by company regulations. However, the younger generation, who have become directors in the past few years, lack morals, and it is certain that they are instructed not to quit and to eat on the side in order to escape their employment responsibilities (penalties),&#8221; said Mr. A.</span></p>
<p> At a press conference held on January 23, the company stressed that it had &#8220;drained all the pus&#8221; from the over 30 years of investigation that began in 1991, but Mr. A has this view.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The company claims that the results are a cumulative total from 1991, but in reality, a significant number of the incidents occurred in the last few years, when the quality of employees declined dramatically. From my firsthand knowledge of that decline in quality, I feel that the 107 cases this time is too small a number. In fact, I believe that there is much more potential for fraud.</span></p>
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<p> What supported the strongest sales group was a unique corporate culture that created a strong pipeline to customers. However, there is no denying the fact that this has blurred the boundary between public and private, and lowered the ethical hurdles.</p>
<p> The recent scandal may have been the inevitable result of institutional fatigue, a failure to update the &#8220;concierge system&#8221; that has made Prudential the &#8220;best&#8221; in the industry.</p>
<figure id="attachment_455513" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-455513" style="width: 8192px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="e9a1fb1c"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/01/e2a5152e5f7a61756e8e8c9166243bea.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-455513" class="wp-caption-text"> President Hiroshi Mabara speaking at the press conference on January 23</figcaption></figure>


 Shinsuke Sakai

 Kazuhiko Nakamura

 Prudential Life Insurance was a hotbed of the ¥3.1 billion fraud. A former employee of Prudential Life Insurance told the inside story. One of the factors that contributed to the fraud was the existence of the "Executive Committee," a group of top salesmen.

Former Prudential Life Employee Says Sales Supremacy Was a Hotbed of ¥3.1 Billion Fraud

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