This Georgia CEO is no quack. Aflac boss is longest-serving in Fortune 250.
Dan Amos often says a good CEO is like a well-trained dog.
“They go wherever the handlers tell them to go, and every once in a while, they’ll turn around and bark or bite,” he said.
Although, as the CEO of Aflac, Amos is more likely to quack than bark.
For 35 years, Amos has served as the epitome of a successful CEO for a large company, mastering the art of keeping shareholders satisfied and turning promises on paper into profit. It’s led the 74-year-old to reach a milestone few ever reach on Wall Street.
Amos in January became the longest-tenured chief executive of a Fortune 250 company, succeeding the recently retired Warren Buffett for the honor. As the son of one of Aflac’s founders, Amos said it’s a surreal accomplishment.
“It’s never really something I thought about,” he said. “I just blinked an eye and 35 years had passed.”
Since 1990, Amos has built Aflac into the world’s largest supplemental insurance company with one of the most recognizable mascots in all of financial services. The Columbus-based company ranks 222 on Fortune Magazine’s list of the largest companies by revenue, by far the highest placement in Georgia outside of metro Atlanta.
Amos and his uncle, John Amos, are the only two CEOs Aflac has had since it was founded 71 years ago. It’s rare for a company to have back-to-back chief executives with that longevity, said Michael Sacks, professor of organization and management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.
For comparison, Atlanta icon Coca-Cola (97 on Fortune’s list) announced last month what will be its seventh CEO change since Aflac’s inception. Both companies outlast the Fortune 500 average of about seven years, according to the Conference Board.
“It’s almost unheard of,” Sacks said of Aflac’s CEO continuity. “It’s a tremendous outlier.”
‘We’ve arrived’
Aflac’s founding in 1955 began with three brothers in a Georgia city that outpunches its weight for entrepreneurial success.
John, Bill and Paul Amos founded American Family Life Insurance Co. of Columbus and sold supplemental insurance, including cancer, dental and life insurance policies. The company later rebranded as American Family Life Assurance Co. of Columbus, embracing the acronym Aflac.
The family business was omnipresent for Dan Amos, Paul’s son, who joined the company as a commission-only sales rep in 1973. The following year, the family traveled to New York City for Aflac’s initial public offering, which is burned into the younger Amos’ memory.
“We were kind of country come to town,” Dan Amos said. “We weren’t a Wall Street group that knew all this sophisticated stuff — it was just three brothers with a dream.”
During the trip, another Georgia icon caught their eye. Coca-Cola was selling branded merchandise, and Dan Amos remembers his father telling him, “When people will buy your brand and wear it, you have arrived.”
Unlike soda, supplemental insurance isn’t tangible and usually needs explanation. Their policies include cancer, dental and life insurance, among others.
Amos said brand recognition was a persistent challenge he looked to address when he became CEO in 1990.
But after spending roughly $300 million on TV commercials throughout the 1990s, Aflac’s name recognition among Americans only rose from 2% to 7%. A new ad campaign in 2000 would forever change that.
Rather than greenlighting a safe commercial idea featuring actor Ray Romano of the hit TV series “Everybody Loves Raymond,” Amos took a risk he was worried would run afoul. He opted for a commercial where a duck — voiced initially by the late Gilbert Gottfried — repeatedly quacked Aflac’s name.
The ad was a smash hit, and now nine out of 10 Americans know Aflac and its mascot. Amos remembers calling his dad after the response to the ad campaign flooded the company’s phone lines and crashed their website.
“People want to buy our duck,” he told his father. “We’ve arrived.”
Focus and ambition
Amos credited smart delegation as a prudent business practice, especially overseas.
When he became CEO, Aflac was licensed in seven countries and most of them were bleeding money. Amos decided to pare that down to just the U.S. and Japan, the world’s two largest supplemental insurance markets.
“They made a decision to dominate the U.S. and Japan markets,” Sacks said. “Strategy is just as much about saying no as it is saying yes.”
Aflac’s Japan operations have always been led locally by a Japanese president, Amos said. That has helped with cultural differences, marketing and adaptation, such as reworking America’s quacking duck commercials — which Japanese audiences found rude — into a similar campaign that found its own success.
Amos said there’s been pressure over the decades to reexpand the company’s global footprint, especially to China and other fast-growing markets. But he said he’ll only enter a market if he’s confident Aflac can dominate.
“I’m not going anywhere where you can only own 49% of it,” he said, a political impossibility in China. “If you can’t control the majority, why would I want to fool with it?”
Betting on college football was another shift. Aflac in 2023 became the title sponsor to the annual Kickoff Game, formerly branded after fellow Georgia business Chick-fil-A.
Amos said he always has an ear open listening for what’s next, trying to avoid stagnation and playing it too safe.
“I just like the business, I find it fun and I like winning,” Amos said. “As a CEO, it’s not subjective — you win based on what your shareholder return is.”
Enduring and evolving
Amos has an impressive report card after 35 years.
Aflac’s annual revenue was $2.7 billion after his first year as CEO. It ended 2024 at $18.9 billion. Aflac ended the most recent third quarter with more than $4.7 billion in revenue, up nearly 39% from the year prior.
In addition, Aflac’s stock price has significantly outpaced the S&P 500 index during Amos’ tenure.
Sacks said Amos’ track record speaks for itself, but prior success isn’t a perfect indicator for the future. Corporate boards have a responsibility to always be evaluating their leadership.
“Clearly, he’s been a terrific fit for Aflac for years,” Sacks said. “Will he continue to be a fit for the Aflac of the future?”
Amos hasn’t named a successor, saying that doing so immediately makes unchosen candidates — along with himself — lame ducks. With the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, postpandemic work schedules and other modern challenges, Amos said he’s prepared for bouts of change, comparing his approach to a herd of buffalo.
“You can be at the front of the herd or you can be at the back of the herd,” he said. “But if you’re outside the herd, you can get shot. I always want to be a part of the herd but not so far ahead.”
Amos said he has no intention of matching Buffett’s 60-year stint of leading Berkshire Hathaway. But Amos still sees open skies ahead while leading his family’s company.
“I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’m going to do it a few more years until they get tired of me,” Amos said.
About the Author
Zachary Hansen, a Georgia native, covers economic development and commercial real estate for the AJC. He's been with the newspaper since 2018 and enjoys diving into complex stories that affect people's lives.
