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• Company Positioning & Core Strengths

  • Lifenet生命 is the leading online-only life insurer in Japan, operating in a 43 trillion yen total domestic life insurance market where online penetration is currently only a few percent, leaving large growth room.
  • Core strengths include: simple, low-cost products enabled by low fixed costs (no sales staff/off-site branches); polished full-online UI/UX for all customer journeys; diverse workforce with 60% of mid-hires from non-insurance industries; a unique young customer base (73% of new policies are for customers aged 20-40, 56% of customers are first-time insurance buyers, enabling long-term lifetime customer value); and strategic partnerships with leading industry players to access large existing customer bases.

• Strategic Focus Areas (2024-2028 Mid-term Plan)

  • Three core strategic pillars: Rebranding, Tech & Services, and Embedded (partner ecosystem integration).
  • A leadership transition is upcoming: incoming CEO Yokozawa is a founding member with a system engineering background, who led the KDDI partnership launch. The new leadership will shift focus from delivering value to differentiating product/service delivery, with direct leadership focus on Tech & Services and embedded partner business expansion.
  • Technology roadmap: Leverage AI and My Number infrastructure to improve customer experience, including AI operators, AI-enhanced underwriting and customer onboarding, and AI utilization in marketing, which aligns well with Lifenet's digital-native origins.
  • Partnership strategy: Grow via the two-wheel model of direct-to-consumer and partner business. For personal insurance, deepen integration with the Ponta (KDDI Group) and V Point (Sumitomo Mitsui Card) point economies. For group credit life insurance, grow with au Jibun Bank while pursuing expansion to additional partner banks.
  • 2025 Operating Investment Plan: After slowing investment pace over 2023-2024 to build foundational capabilities, Lifenet will re-accelerate growth-oriented investment in 2025 to return personal policy growth to a higher trajectory. Investment will follow an incremental approach focused on scaling policy acquisition rather than sacrificing near-term profitability for rapid growth, with a target to improve operating efficiency over the medium term.

• Governance & Capital Market Initiatives

  • Lifenet targets moving to the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market in 2025, and already meets all numerical listing requirements. The company has also recently relaunched its investor relations website to expand access for individual investors.

• 2028 Mid-term Targets (maintained): Target total Comprehensive Equity of 200 billion yen to 240 billion yen, per-share Comprehensive Equity annual growth of approximately 10%, and a share price of 3,000 yen or higher.
• Group Credit Life Insurance Growth: Management expects continued solid growth from the existing au Jibun Bank partnership, and targets early expansion to 2-3 additional partner banks within the 2024-2028 mid-term period, to deliver both organic growth with the existing partner and non-continuous growth via new partner expansion.
• 2025 Growth Outlook: Management confirms on-track progress toward 2028 targets as of 2024, and expects re-accelerated investment to drive a reacceleration of policy growth.
• Capital Market: Management maintains the target for TSE Prime Market transfer within 2025.

1. Personal Insurance: The largest core business segment, accounting for approximately 80% of total annualized policy premium as of the end of the 2025 March quarter. It has grown steadily, with term life insurance making up around 50% of product mix, and medical insurance (whole life + term) accounting for less than 30%.
2. Group Credit Life Insurance (Dantai Shinyou Seimei Hoken / Danshin): Launched in mid-2023 in partnership with au Jibun Bank, it reached approximately 20% of total annualized policy premium by the end of the 2025 March quarter, growing rapidly to become a material business segment.

Key aggregate financial metrics:

• Total Comprehensive Equity stood at 167 billion yen, with 18% average annual growth since listing, and per-share Comprehensive Equity reached 2,080 yen.
• Total annualized in-force premium grew 120% year-over-year in the 2025 March quarter.
• Insurance service profit (IFRS) reached 9.5 billion yen, up 116% year-over-year and exceeding the prior guidance of 8.9 billion yen.

• Near-term investment to drive growth will reduce profit retention in the short term, requiring medium-term efficiency improvements to offset higher operating expense.
• While Japan statutory accounting rules require full expensing of new policy acquisition costs in the first year (creating accounting deficits for growing firms even when profitable under IFRS), which precludes dividend payments for the foreseeable future.
• Higher new policy acquisition growth will likely increase lapse rates slightly in the near term, as new policies have higher early lapse rates than in-force policies.

Q: What is the growth potential for the online life insurance channel in Japan? / A: Currently, ~20% of consumers across age groups say they are willing to buy insurance online, but only ~4% have actually done so, creating a large untapped growth gap. Management expects mid-term online penetration can rise to ~10%, matching current penetration for online auto insurance, and even a 1% market share increase delivers material growth given the 43 trillion yen size of Japan's total life insurance market.

Q: What is the logic of Lifenet's partner ecosystem strategy, and what are the benefits for partner firms? / A: The strategy lets Lifenet access large, otherwise unreachable customer bases to speed up penetration of its products. Unlike models where partners only earn sales commissions, core partners like KDDI and Sumitomo Mitsui Card gain synergy for their core business: adding long-tail life insurance helps reduce customer churn for communication contracts and increases usage of credit cards as primary payment methods, aligning incentives for long-term collaboration. Future targets are large firms with big customer/data bases where embedding insurance adds core business value.

Q: What is the outlook for group credit life insurance growth, including expansion to other partners? / A: The business reached its current scale just two years after launch, and will continue growing rapidly alongside au Jibun Bank's fast-growing mortgage business, which delivers faster growth than adding multiple small partners. Management targets adding 2-3 new partner banks within the 2024-2028 mid-term period, growing via both existing partner expansion and new partner horizontal expansion. The business also creates synergy by introducing online insurance to young first-time home buyers, supporting overall online penetration growth.

Q: What is Lifenet's shareholder return policy for the foreseeable future? / A: There are no immediate plans for cash dividends, because dividends must follow Japanese statutory accounting, which requires full upfront expensing of new acquisition costs. As a growing firm, this creates accounting deficits even though Lifenet is profitable under IFRS (which amortizes acquisition costs over the policy term). Lifenet is committed to delivering returns via share price growth (capital gains), and has a public 2028 target share price of 3,000 yen or higher to reflect this commitment.

Q: What explains the declining lapse rate, and what is the future outlook? / A: Lapse rates have trended down to ~5.5% recently, driven by active lapse prevention efforts and a period of slower new policy growth over the past two years (new policies have higher early lapse rates). Management expects a long-term stable lapse rate of 6-7% to be the sustainable normal range. Going forward, growth will come from accelerating new policy acquisition while keeping lapses stable within this healthy range, which is not expected to create material risk.