Sompo Japan Insurance Inc., one of Japan's six biggest nonlife insurers, said Monday it failed to make payouts totaling 920 million yen in 27,296 cases between July 2002 and last June.

Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., another major nonlife insurer, said Monday it had 17,000 cases of payout failures in the past three years. The value of the payout failures was not disclosed.

On an industrywide basis, the number of nonpayment cases is expected to top 100,000, amounting to several billion, yen industry sources said.

The failures stemmed mainly from problems with insurance payment calculations systems and mistakes made by staff in charge of payouts, they said.

At Sompo Japan, payment failures accounted for 0.35 percent of its 7.9 million cases where payments were necessary in the three years -- roughly one in every 300 cases, the company said. The average amount that it failed to pay stood at 34,000 yen per case, but the amount reached several million yen in some cases, according to the firm.

Sompo Japan has already covered the failed payments in 26,972 cases, or 98.8 percent of the nonpayment cases. It will soon make full payments in the remaining nonpayment cases, the company said.

Sompo Japan will also consider implementing surveys into possible nonpayment cases before July 2002.

The company wants to consider remuneration cuts and other forms of punishment for its executives and other employees responsible for the payout failures, a Sompo Japan official said.