ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that ITOCHU has entered a capital and business alliance with Churchill Innovative Holdings LLC (headquartered in Florida, USA; Jonathan Karlin, CEO), a holding company of the Neo Group which operates a retail insurance distribution business in the United States focused on health insurance. Going forward, ITOCHU will partner with Neo Insurance Solutions LLC, a core company of the Neo Group, in entering the retail insurance distribution industry in the United States.

The United States is the world’s largest insurance market. The U.S. health insurance market for individuals younger than 65 excluding the Affordable Care Act (the ACA or Obamacare) and the health insurance provided by employers has grown to approx. 8.9 billion USD in terms of gross underwriting premiums in 2023. Since 2017, the market has been growing at an annual rate greater than 3%.^*1 It is expected that the market will continue to grow due to factors such as the increase in the number of freelance and gig workers (workers who undertake jobs on an on-demand basis) in the United States and the increase in demand for insurance reviews due to an increase in medical expenses.

The Neo Group operates an independent marketing organization (IMO) business where partner distributors are provided with products from multiple insurance companies for sales promotion purposes. The Group builds a unique ecosystem for providing the functions necessary for the insurance distribution process in a one-stop manner. These functions include helping distributors streamline their operations (e.g., sales, requests, customer management) and support the referral of potential customers using a digital platform and undertaking call center operations, in addition to centralizing information from insurance companies and distributors and providing it to both parties. Having established a strong reputation among insurance companies and distributors, the Neo Group has formed alliances with more than 100 distributors in the United States and offers products from more than 20 insurance companies only eight years after its founding.

With its strengths in the retail insurance sector in Japan, including HOKEN NO MADOGUCHI GROUP INC., ITOCHU is enhancing its local retail insurance operations overseas, including the sale of motorcycle insurance and pet insurance in Thailand and its investments in strong non-life insurance companies in the retail sector.^*2 Through the recent capital and business alliance, our experience and expertise in the retail insurance sector and our global network and the reinsurance^*3 scheme we have developed as one of the largest Japanese-affiliated insurance brokers will be shared with Neo Insurance Solutions to enhance the partner’s corporate value and create trade advantages.

ITOCHU has set its management policy with this theme: “The Brand-new Deal – Profit opportunities are shifting downstream –” Through this capital alliance, ITOCHU will enter the ever-growing and changing U.S. insurance market, the world's largest, to expand its business domains and earnings platform.