Aflac

Aflac Incorporated

File:Aflac.png
Company type	Public NYSE: AFL TYO: 8686
Industry	Accident and Health Insurance
Founded	1955
Headquarters	Columbus, Georgia
Key people	Dan Amos, chief executive officer
Products	Supplemental Health and Life insurance
Revenue	$16.6 billion USD (2008)
Operating income	4,157,000,000 United States dollar (2022)
Net income	$1.3 billion USD (2008)
Total assets	165,090,000,000 United States dollar (2020)
Number of employees	8,292 full-time employees in the United States and Japan (2008)
Parent	Aflac Incorporated
Website	aflac.com

Aflac (American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus) sells supplemental health and life insurance in the United States and Japan. The company was founded in 1955 and is based in Columbus, Georgia.

In the United States, Aflac is known for its policies, which pay cash benefits when a policyholder has a covered accident or sickness. Most of Aflac's policies are individually underwritten and distributed through its independent agents.

Since 2000, the company's identity has become more widely recognized, as the result of commercials featuring the Aflac Duck, who frustratedly quacks the company's name to unsuspecting prospective policyholders.

History

The company was founded by three brothers, John, Paul, and Bill Amos, in Columbus, Georgia, in 1955 as American Family Life Insurance Company of Columbus (not to be confused with American Family Insurance). In 1964 the company’s corporate name was changed to American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus, better known today as Aflac. The company had 6,426 policyholders in 1956.

American Family Life pioneered cancer insurance in 1958. Beginning in 1964 the company decided to focus sales on worksite settings. By 2003, more than 98 percent of the company's policies in the United States were issued on a payroll-deduction basis, making the company a leader in that sales approach.

In 1973, Aflac established a holding company, the American Family Corporation. The company's 1990 adoption of the "Aflac" acronym set it apart from the many other insurance firms that include the word "American" in their names. (The official insurer company name is still "American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus.")

In 2005, the logo was changed to incorporate a duck character, which is prominently featured in the company's advertising.

Businesses

Aflac operates in the United States and Japan (where the term "American Family" is still used in commercials). Aflac U.S. total new annualized premium sales were slightly down, 0.4 percent, in 2008 to $1.6 billion, according to the company's 2008 fourth quarter earnings release. In Japan, for the year, total new annualized premium sales were up slightly to ¥114.7 billion, again according to the company's 2008 fourth quarter earnings release.

Aflac's worldwide headquarters and corporate offices are located in an 18-story tower east of downtown Columbus, Georgia.

At the end of 2008, the corporation's total assets were more than $79 billion, and Aflac insurance products provided protection to more than 40 million people worldwide. The company is the largest provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance in the United States and the largest insurance company overall in Japan, when measured by individual insurance policies in force. Aflac launched a campaign in 2001 to promote their first accident policy in Japan, which The Wall Street Journal rated as one of the "ten most effective campaigns of 2000."

The company now offers several types (11) of insurance policies in the United States, including the following:

• Accident
• Cancer/Specified Disease
• Short-Term Disability
• Hospital Intensive Care
• Hospital Confinement Indemnity
• Hospital Confinement Sickness Indemnity
• Long-Term Care
• Specified Health Event
• Dental
• Vision
• Term Life
• Whole Life
• Juvenile Life (Term to Age 25)

Aflac also offers unreimbursed medical and dependent day care flexible spending accounts.

Aflac Duck

File:Aflac Dack2.JPG

Aflac Duck

The Aflac brand has developed wide recognition recently with commercials starring the famous Aflac Duck (with Gilbert Gottfried providing the voice) on television which started airing in December 1999. The duck concept and all of the commercials to date have been created by Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency based in New York City. Struggling to come up with a concept to make the big but relatively obscure insurance company's name memorable, art director Eric David stumbled upon the duck idea by walking around Central Park at lunchtime uttering, "Aflac, Aflac." He soon realized how much the company's name sounded like a duck's quack. David provides one of the duck's two voices: Although Gottfried handles the duck's screams, David does the normal Aflac quacks. The Aflac Duck character has now starred in more than 30 commercials.

The Aflac duck is portrayed through a combination of footage of real ducks, CGI effects, and lifelike puppets for close-ups. Most of the commercials feature humans discussing the insurance that Aflac provides, although they are unable to remember the name of the company. The duck quacks the Aflac name, trying to jog their memory. The duck also has a temper, which leads it to angered outbursts that invariably backfire. Misfortunes befalling the Aflac Duck include falling into the Grand Canyon, getting hit by a train, sliding off a snowy rooftop and onto a snowman, getting placed on an intense roller coaster, and being hit by a falling automobile. In many commercials, it seems that there is only one person who actually notices the duck, a character played by Earl Billings. This character was in many of the earlier ads with the duck. The character, however, has never spoken during the ads and seems to be unnerved by the presence of the duck.

Celebrities have also starred in the Aflac ads, including Chevy Chase, Yogi Berra, Yao Ming, Donald Trump's wife, Melania Trump, NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, United States Olympic synchronized swimming team, and Wayne Newton playing at Stardust Hotel and Casino in 2003 commercial. Berra's first ad, "Berra at the Barber," takes place in a barber shop and features three new Yogiisms:

"It's the one you really need to have. If you don't have it, that's why you need it."

"If you get hurt and miss work, it won't hurt to miss work."

"They give you cash, which is just as good as money."

Since 2001, the Aflac Duck also appears in commercials in Japan though with a slightly different voice quacking "Aflac!" The personality of the Japanese Aflac Duck is less grumpy than in the U.S. commercials. The duck also smiles in some of the Japanese ads, sings along to songs and happily stamps its feet in time to music. The Aflac Duck appears in Japanese commercials as a reassuring character. The company's most recent commercials for the U.S. and Japan can be seen on the company's Web site.

Aflac sells plush Aflac Duck dolls, and the proceeds benefit the Aflac Cancer Center and Blood Disorders Service at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, which is recognized as one of the largest childhood cancer treatment and research centers in the United States by Child magazine. The sales began after the popularity of the commercials began to generate requests from the public asking where they could purchase "the duck". The sales are made through the company's Web site and through retailers such as Macy's department stores. Since 2001, sales of the Aflac duck have raised nearly $2 million to benefit the center.

In a 2002 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, actor Ben Affleck stated he has been driven crazy with the Aflac Duck with drunk women coming up to him yelling "Aflac!" Affleck has also been approached by the advertising company to do television ads for them, but Affleck replied to them "You guys are killing me".

See also

• List of United States insurance companies

References

2007 Annual Report

Corporate History

[1]

External links

• Aflac
• Aflac Investor Relations
• Aflac Careers
• Commercials featuring the Aflac Duck (with ringtones, wallpapers and other Aflac Duck-related content)