A program for developing truly global talent
To realize a future of health, wellbeing and financial protection, the Sompo Group realigned global operations in April 2025 into two business segments—SOMPO P&C and SOMPO Wellbeing. Both divisions draw on unique strengths to create value and advance our aim of becoming a Japan-born truly global company offering customers tailored risk solutions.
In Japan, global talent development typically focuses on English proficiency. But we believe that global talent means individuals who apply their unique backgrounds and expertise and collaborate across borders.
SOMPO Global University’s approach thus includes the focus on language and goes beyond it to cultivate professionals who thrive as leaders and who foster value in international teams anywhere. Participants of various backgrounds from various regions’ group companies benefit from tackling challenges together. Collaborative learning grants them fresh perspectives and significant, rapid development that equips them for global leadership.
A specialized curriculum created in collaboration with a top university
SOMPO Global University was launched in Japan in 2012 to develop young leaders, focusing on two parts: to strengthen management skills and to nurture a global mindset through experience outside the company.
The first part has since been opened to colleagues from our group companies around the world and is carried out through a program at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, renowned for excellence in global education. The tailored curriculum includes lectures on marketing strategy and business innovation and even visits to start-ups. It emphasizes the shaping and presenting of strategies by diverse teams for practical applications. The monthlong NUS residency also embraces discussion and relationship-building for long-lasting global networking.
Participants from Sompo Japan carry out the second part as on-the-job training (OJT) at domestic or international start-ups or NPOs outside the insurance sector for about nine months. The OJT broadens their perspectives as they apply their NUS lessons in unfamiliar environments. Through this part of the program, SOMPO Global University is not only able to nurture future leaders among employees, but we are also able to contribute to a part of society with whom our businesses usually have no interaction.
Fostering growth over the long term
Human resource development is like nurturing a tree—the individual and company grow together over time. The program’s excellence notwithstanding, it cannot achieve optimal results in the short term. Optimization occurs only with steady, persistent, long-term development of both the individuals and the organization.
Some early SOMPO Global University alumni, in fact, are only now emerging as key talents and assuming responsibilities as executive officers or in other important roles at Sompo Group companies outside of Japan. At the same time, the organization has to further refine the talent development program. The continuous improvement of the SOMPO Global University program makes it a stronger and more effective foundation for nurturing capable global leaders of diverse backgrounds.
