Kiichi Umezawa to Head Global Business Intelligence at JD Power Japan
COSTA MESA, Calif.: 1 April 2019 — JD Power, the global leader in data analytics and consumer insights, has rebranded its service industries practices in banking and credit cards; wealth and lending; insurance; technology, media and telecom; utilities; travel and hospitality; and health. The new JD Power Global Business Intelligence (GBI) division harnesses the company’s proven “Voice of the Customer” research to deliver deep market intelligence across an ever-growing number of industries and product categories. It sits alongside the JD Power Global Automotive practice as a standalone business unit.
Financial services veteran Kiichi Umezawa has joined JD Power and will be leading the company’s Japan GBI unit. He will report to JD Power Senior Vice President and General Manager Keith Webster. Prior to joining JD Power, Umezawa held senior management roles with UBS, Goldman Sachs, Bank of Japan and the Financial Services Agency.
“Today, the world’s leading businesses across more than a dozen different industries rely on JD Power data, research and insights to guide their customer-facing strategies, and consumers around the world look to JD Power ratings as the undisputed mark of quality,” said Dave Habiger, President and CEO of JD Power. “By tapping the collective power of our insights in financial services, insurance, tech, utilities, travel and health, we will be even better-positioned to deliver the deep industry expertise, empirical evidence, and algorithmic forecasting models the world’s biggest businesses need to overcome their toughest challenges. I look forward to working closely with Kiichi and his incredible team in Japan to elevate the insights we deliver to business leaders to help them compete on the local and global stages.”
Working both within and across industry verticals, the GBI unit is focused on developing incisive benchmark studies that capture the full spectrum of customer experience; proprietary data, analytics and predictive models that forecast consumer trends; and tailored advice to global business leaders. The new division will also leverage “Voice of the Customer” insights to produce critical benchmark data sets for evaluating executive compensation, global competition and modernization of financial infrastructure in Japan. By drawing on a global database of customer experience and sentiment metrics, JD Power GBI will provide an unbiased barometer of public opinion on a variety of key business issues.
“Japanese businesses are going through an unprecedented period of regulatory, technological and geopolitical change, making it more important than ever for business leaders to build strategies rooted in quantitative evidence and deep market intelligence,” Umezawa said. “I am honored to work with a firm that is so well known for its deep analytic capabilities and unbiased perspective, and I look forward to leveraging that position to help Japanese businesses thrive in the global marketplace.”