Overall, the country is hoping that more relaxed investment guidelines will promote the local lending industry. Even if large IT businesses, like Amazon.com, have been exploring the nation’s financial services sector, Japanese banks are dealing with various restrictions when it comes to providing ‘non-core’ banking services.
Now, bank holding companies require approval from the Financial Services Agency (FSA), Japan’s financial regulator, to acquire a stake of more than 15% in non-financial businesses. The Japanese government aims to ease these rules so that banking service providers would only be required to report their investments in fintech companies to the FSA. They would not need to obtain approval in advance.
Moreover, current guidelines require systems development and advertising businesses to generate 50% or more of their earnings from bank-related services. If this rule is changed or lifted, then developers will be able to sell products like settlement systems to more customers, meanwhile, advertising units would have the option of selling ads to mortgage borrowers.
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