Provisional Translation

Q.

The Working Group report which stated that 20 million yen would be necessary in old age will not be covered at next week’s Financial System Council. Going forward, the Working Group will take up a policy that focuses on establishing customer-oriented business management at financial institutions, and it’s possible that topics will include how to build assets. What kind of discussions do you expect from the Working Group?

A.

We’ve been talking about the necessity of a customer-oriented approach for some time now, but it hasn’t been achieved yet. There’s a lot of work to get done, including the 20 million yen issue you’ve asked about, and several others. Probably your point of interest is that proposal will not come up this time. The report is on the website, and the entire text can still be viewed, so that’s one opinion on the topic. However, the way the report was written at that time could trigger anxiety about reaching old age, so for that reason it had an unintended influence. That was not our intent at all, so we said that we rejected the report. Currently, what kinds of topics should be discussed, including that issue, are being determined within the Financial System Council. It was Mr. Kanda, I believe, who struck a good balance in his opinion. As such, the Council is considering issues from among the topics under various forms of discussion, and I think that’s a good thing.