Several years ago, a member of my team asked me a question. “Dan, when is the last time you had a day when you did absolutely nothing that involved Aflac?” Without missing a beat, I said, “When was the pager invented?”
The responsibility of my job means I must be accessible and prior to the pager, that meant I had to stay home or in the office. Today, I can be anywhere in the world and still be reached on my smartphone. While that means I am always on the clock, it is offset by the freedom and ability to do my job wherever I may be.
As CEO of Aflac Incorporated for 34 years, there isn’t much that I haven’t seen in terms of innovations in the insurance industry. Whether it pertains to new products that help protect today’s policyholders seeking to preserve their financial security or new technology that paves the way for delivering benefits faster and more accurately, the one thing I’ve learned over time is that you can never sit still. The customer simply won’t allow it.
The world is innovating at a lightning pace. It’s coming at us faster than before, yet slower than it ever will in the future. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly altering the landscape, and yes, Aflac is utilizing its advantages where appropriate, in measured ways, but always with the clear understanding that we are a people-oriented service provider. There is no doubt AI helps accelerate our more repetitive tasks. On the other hand, I am yet to see a computer that can speak compassionately to a policyholder who has just been diagnosed with cancer as well as our professionals can. And in a business like ours where personal information is regularly exchanged, AI is not without risk.
But there will never be a book titled “Great Fence-Sitters in History,” so we will continue to lead by exploring ways to enhance services through technology, including AI. After all, 30 years ago, when the internet was a new, relatively unexplored tool exploding in the business world, you either kept pace or risked losing market share to competitors who were more visionary. We didn’t let that happen back then and we aren’t going to lag today. Innovation excites us as much as it did the day I got that first pager, and it will continue to transform the way we and all others conduct business.
Dan Amos is among the longest tenured CEOs in the Fortune 500. He has appeared five times on Institutional Investor magazine’s lists of America’s Best CEOs for the insurance category. He has been named one of the 100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World by the Harvard Business Review five times.
