Aflac CEO Dan Amos on aging, succession planning, and running a family-founded company for 34 years

A few months ago, at a holiday party, I started chatting about traveling in Japan with an executive at Aflac. I thought I knew a lot about his company—that duck, those TV commercials, “AFLAAAAC!” But our conversation sparked my curiosity about the oddball life insurer; its improbable main market of Japan; its lesser-known business focus on cancer; and its longtime CEO Dan Amos, who’s been running the family-founded company for 34 years.

That makes Amos the fifth-longest tenured CEO of the Fortune 500, behind only Warren Buffett and a handful of other men. It’s a tremendous and rare accomplishment, especially given that the average Fortune 500 CEO lasts seven years. And, at age 72, Amos is healthy and isn’t planning on stepping back anytime soon: “There’s only so many fish I can catch,” he told me in February, when I visited the Aflac headquarters in Columbus, Ga. “I’m not going to be that good of a retiree.” 

On the one hand, that’s great news for Aflac’s investors. Since Amos became CEO in 1990, succeeding his uncle (and Aflac cofounder) John Amos, he’s increased Aflac’s annual revenues sevenfold and sent its stock price and shareholder returns soaring. In particular, his decision to launch an unusual TV commercial in 2000, unleashing that squawking duck mascot, supercharged Aflac’s business and helped change how all insurance is marketed today.

Yet Aflac is also starting to show its age. Annual revenues have been shrinking since 2019. It’s facing a population crisis in Japan, where Aflac makes 70% of its profits, and where its core customers are aging—and dying out—at an alarming rate. 

And even if he remains CEO for decades to come, Amos is closer to the end of his tenure than his beginning—raising questions about how he’s preparing his company to thrive after him. “Longevity brings stability,” says Cathy Seifert, an insurance industry analyst for CFRA Research. “But are you marking time? Or are you staying relevant and dynamic?”

I sat down with Amos to discuss all of this, for a feature profile in the new issue of Fortune. Our conversation ranged from the wacky—yes, there will be duck puns—to what Amos called the “feeding frenzy” over President Joe Biden’s age, and the wider discourse about the mental fitness of older leaders.

I came away with the impression of a CEO for whom all these business questions are incredibly personal. After running Aflac for 34 years, “it feels like one of my children,” Amos told me. “I believe I’m a better CEO because of the family connection.”

Read my full story here.

Maria Aspan
maria.aspan@fortune.com
@mariaaspan

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