Aflac CEO becomes Longest Serving Executive in Fortune 250

Following the departure of Warren Buffet as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Dan Amos, CEO of Aflac, now stands as the longest serving CEO on the Fortune 250.

Dan has been responsible for overseeing shareholder satisfaction and ensuring the return of profit for Aflac over a tenure of 35 years.

“It’s never really something I thought about,” Dan says. “I just blinked an eye and 35 years had passed.”

Since 1990, Dan has been instrumental in turning Aflac into the world’s largest supplemental insurance company. The US firm currently ranks 222 on Fortune Magazine’s list of the largest companies by revenue.

Dan and his uncle, John Amos, have been the Aflac’s only two CEOs since its inception more than 70 years ago.

Michael Sacks, Professor of Organization and Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, says a company having two chief executives back to back across such a period of time is incredibly rare.

“It’s almost unheard of,” Michael says. “It’s a tremendous outlier.”

Prioritising brand recognition

John and his two brothers Paul Amos and Bill Amos founded the company in 1955 under the name American Family Life Insurance Co. of Columbus, providing customers with supplemental insurance for cancer, dental and life insurance policies.

The company later rebranded as American Family Life Assurance Co. of Columbus and embraced the Aflac acronym.

During a trip to New York for Aflac’s IPO in 1973, the family saw that Coca-Cola was selling branded merchandise. Dan said he remembered his father telling him, “When people will buy your brand and wear it, you have arrived”.

Dan became CEO in 1990 and said that establishing brand recognition was one of his key strategies for the firm.

In 2000, Dan implemented an ad campaign that would establish Aflac as a household name.

The advertising campaign featured a duck, voiced by the late Gilbert Gottfried, who ‘quacked’ the firm’s name.

The advert was hugely successful with consumers, with Aflac reporting that nine out of 10 people recognised the firm’s brand both in the US and Japan.

“People want to buy our duck,” Dan told his father. “We’ve arrived.”

Expanding Aflac’s global footprint

When Dan became CEO, Aflac was licensed across seven countries. Dan streamlined the firm’s reach to improve company costs, focusing solely on the US and Japan.

“They made a decision to dominate the US and Japan markets,” Michael says. “Strategy is just as much about saying no as it is saying yes.”

Dan says there was pressure over the decades to expand the company’s global footprint, in particular with China and other fast-growing markets. He adds that he’ll only enter a market if he’s confident that Aflac can dominate it.

“I’m not going anywhere where you can only own 49% of it,” Dan adds. “If you can’t control the majority, why would I want to fool with it?”

Across the three decades of Dan’s tenure, the company has seen consistent financial growth, with annual revenue reaching US$2.7bn in his first year as CEO.

At the end of 2024, the company achieved US$18.9bn in annual revenue and its most recent third quarter, saw more than US$4.7bn in revenue, up nearly 39% from the year prior.

Amos is yet to name a successor after his eventual departure from the CEO role. Amid the rise of AI, changing work schedules and geopolitical challenges, Dan says he’s prepared for new periods of industry 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 adds. “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.”