"We are faced with three megatrends,” says Tatsufumi Sakai, president and group chief executive of Mizuho. “One is data, one is the shrinking population and ageing society, and the third is globalization.”
When Japanese banks want to show they mean business in the face of a challenge, they typically do so by proudly announcing a longer plan than the previous one. So, just as MUFG is in the middle of a six-year reimagining plan, Mizuho has ditched its usual three-year medium-term plan and opted for one that will take five.
“We intentionally changed to five years because we intend to transition to the next generation of financial services,” says Sakai.
He used that expression in his message to shareholders in the bank’s integrated report – a Japanese equivalent of an annual report – this year. What exactly does it mean?
“The next generation of financial services means our business model will be not only based on the value of money itself but on the combination with non-financial services,” says Sakai.
