U.S. Postal Service Recognizes American Family Life Insurance Company (Aflac) At 2008 National Postal Forum

Pictured l-r: Terry Wilson, Vice President, Area Operations, Southeast Area, Eric Seldon, Vice President, AIM and Support Services, Chief Marketing Officer Anita Bizzotto and Deputy Postmaster General Pat Donahoe

ANAHEIM, CA — The U.S. Postal Service recently recognized American Family Life Insurance Company (Aflac) with its Creative Business Solutions Award for the company’s commitment to a successful business partnership with the Postal Service. At each National Postal Forum, a select group of Postal customers is acknowledged and recognized by for their contributions to the continued success of the mailing industry.

The Creative Business Solutions Award, one of three “best in class” awards presented annually at the Forum, recognizes customers who have demonstrated creativity by finding new ways to use mail to drive significant business results. Winners in this category have taken calculated risks by using the mail in new and different ways to help achieve their company’s business objectives with successful, quantifiable results.

American Family Life Insurance Company (Aflac) was founded on November 17, 1955 by three brothers; John, Paul and Bill Amos. In its first year of operations, Aflac had 6,426 policyholders and $388,000 in assets.  Today, 50 years later, Aflac has over 59 billion dollars in assets and insures more than 40 million people worldwide. The core of their business is to design insurance policies that can be used to help with those out-of-pocket expenses not covered by the existing primary insurance of U.S. consumers.  Aflac continues to develop new products that meet the needs of the market. Aflac focuses its products on the worksite market since that is where most Americans buy health insurance. Many of the workers insured by Aflac are employed by small businesses.

The people who sell their products at worksites in the United States are independent sales associates and sales coordinators who manage defined geographical territories. Nationally, there are more than 60,000 licensed Aflac sales associates and coordinators who market our insurance products.

Aflac decided to take a proactive approach to comply with USPS’ mandate to reduce Undeliverable as Addressed mail 50% by 2010.  The USPS Sales team approached Aflac regarding the UAA initiative to receive free clean up.  Aflac had considerable return mail issues and were anxious to improve their ROI and reduce postage waste. A team was put together with the USPS Address management Group, the local USPS team and Aflac to manage this initiative.   Aflac brought their IT expert to discuss proper formatting and the process for the UAA clean up.  It was through this effort that Aflac learned of the AEC (Address Element Correction) I & II program.  Upon learning about AEC, Aflac submitted their address files and received a response within 48 hours for AEC I.  Once those records were expunged, the files were also submitted for the AEC II process.

In summary, Aflac had submitted nearly 500,000 files with an improved correction rating of 78%.  These corrections will result in improved customer relations with Aflac policy holders, reduced return mail and caller service complaints.   Aflac is extremely pleased with the results in support of improving their bottom line reduction of UAA mailings, improving customer service and supporting the USPS initiatives.

Aflac was nominated for this award by Terry Wilson, Vice President, Area Operations, Southeast Area.

“We are pleased to recognize and honor Aflac for its innovation, creativity and leadership,” said Wilson. “By using postal products and services in new ways, Aflac has produced winning business results and supported the mailing industry.”

The National Postal Forum is the mailing industry’s premier trade show and event. More than 7,000 industry professionals attend the four-day conference that features 140 workshops and special sessions, four symposiums and 13 professional certificate programs.

For more information on the 2008 National Postal Forum, visit http://www.npf.org.