RetireJapan

Hi all. I decided to take a quick look at my Rakuten campaigns and promotions again, and I've noticed I'm eligible for their "Mini Cancer Insurance" (ミニがん保険" plan. I'm unsure if the page is accessible by everyone, but here's a link just in case.

Unless I'm missing something in the as-usual plethora of information, it seems to be:

1. Completely free to sign up.
2. Lasts for 1 year.
3. A payout of 50,000 JPY if I get diagnosed with cancer whilst the plan remains active.
4. After the 1 year expiry date, it is cancelled and there is no paid plan that gets activated.

This is honestly the weirdest campaign I've seen to date, but it's free money nonetheless that I of course I hope to never need to cash out.

My question is, has anyone entered this plan, and is there anything I might be missing? I'm tempted, but since it only lasts for 1 year I feel like I should hold off for a while..

Viralriver wrote: ↑Sun Jun 19, 2022 12:16 pm Hi all. I decided to take a quick look at my Rakuten campaigns and promotions again, and I've noticed I'm eligible for their "Mini Cancer Insurance" (ミニがん保険" plan. I'm unsure if the page is accessible by everyone, but here's a link just in case.

Unless I'm missing something in the as-usual plethora of information, it seems to be:

1. Completely free to sign up.
2. Lasts for 1 year.
3. A payout of 50,000 JPY if I get diagnosed with cancer whilst the plan remains active.
4. After the 1 year expiry date, it is cancelled and there is no paid plan that gets activated.

This is honestly the weirdest campaign I've seen to date, but it's free money nonetheless that I of course I hope to never need to cash out.

My question is, has anyone entered this plan, and is there anything I might be missing? I'm tempted, but since it only lasts for 1 year I feel like I should hold off for a while..

https://namakeru.com/entry/rakuten-hoken

They want your sweet sweet data.

Hmm, I read through that entire article/blog and I'm not too convinced. Sure, Rakuten are obviously selling your data to insurance companies, but I'm not convinced that would be a good enough reason to back out. Everything we do, everything we sign up for has the same paper trail. If I were to sign up for Rakuten Fashion, I expect my targeted ads to be slightly different. And enroling in a free 50k insurance payout for absolutely no downside probably isn't the strongest signal of "this person is happy to pay for insurance", so I doubt it's that srrong of a marketing pull for companies they sell my data to. That being said, I guess that's worth Rakuten the very small chance of having to pay out 50k and also explains why it's only a year, since we give them a one-stop bit of data saying "I want insurance" and they can't get much more value out of us after that.

Hopefully I never need it!

I guess the commercial value of these campaigns is not just about data, there is also a sub-conscious aspect. The customer gains familiarity with the "product" (in this case cancer insurance), its benefits, and they become familiar with the sign-up procedure. A certain fraction of the customers will then buy cancer insurance later in life (potentially many years later) when they otherwise wouldn't have based on this gained familiarity

These sub-conscious modifiers are exceptionally smart, as they can perforate the defenses of even strong-willed folk unbeknownst.

Viralriver wrote: ↑Mon Jun 20, 2022 1:21 am...Everything we do, everything we sign up for has the same paper trail. ...

Maybe, maybe not, I guess it depends on what they ask--how thorough they are--during sign up.

Separately, I read some time back that a good 'user' profile is worth $60-75 (eg facebook). Since the likelihood of someone being diagnosed with cancer in the coming year is very small, this could be an attractive source of revenue, and since the payout is so small, rakuten could just cover it--no need for an actual insurance company behind them (maybe to vet any paperwork when a claim is made?).

Not stated/mentioned up front is that cancer policies frequently only pay for stage II cancer and above, and that may also be the case here. If so, rakuten's odds are excellent.

The surgeons removed my upper right lung lobe a couple years ago, but it was only tagged as stage Ia. I'm fine and all, but most cancer policies would not pay out for that, and this rakuten freebie might be similar.

Just want to say that Rakuten is an insurance company themselves so its not an issue but I think Japan's insurance laws are quite strict and I don't think random companies are allowed to sell insurance without a license. My employer offered some low value "1 day insurance" type thing and we still needed to partner with an insurance company to be able to do so.