The first call to Aflac Chairman and CEO Dan Amos came at 5 a.m. Friday. Despite the time and the nature of the call, he took it in relative stride.
"You can't be shocked that there's an earthquake in Japan," he said hours later, after the devastating impact of a tsunami on the island nation had become clear.
Among Georgia companies with operations in Japan, Columbus-based Aflac has perhaps the most at stake. It does three-quarters of its business there and is the largest insurer in Japan in terms of the number of policies in force, covering one in four households.
"The first thing you wonder about is your employees," said Amos, who has 5,000 in Japan. Fewer than 100 were directly affected and he found out quickly they were fine.
Aflac's business will be fine, too, he added.
"Actuarially speaking, that's calculated in our premiums," he said. "We don't see any big change in the financial area."
Other Georgia companies with significant operations in Japan contacted Friday said they either had yet to fully assess the impact of the damage on their business, or had been relatively unaffected.
UPS said it believed its roughly 1,000 employees in Japan were safe. It said some operations in the disaster region were suspended but they continued as normal elsewhere.
Coca-Cola said it was still evaluating the impact. The company employs 23,000 in Japan and has 12 bottling companies. Japan represents about 20 percent of volume in its Pacific Group.
While Aflac would like to increase its business in the United States, Amos said he is not uncomfortable with the amount of work it does in Japan. The disaster Friday won't cause it to try to reduce its Japanese business.
"It's part of doing business in Japan," he said.
Amos said he will travel to Japan Sunday. The trip was arranged prior to the earthquake, but while there he will present a donation to the International Red Cross of 100 million yen, which he estimated at about $1.2 million.
Japan is the fourth-largest export market for Georgia, after Canada, China and Mexico.
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