Mizuho Financial : Speech Script (PDF/6,784KB)

Our first priority is ensuring that our customers can use Mizuho's services with peace of mind. As outlined in the upper part of this page, the entire company will come together to work on this plan, ensuring the stable operation of our systems and operations. We believe that this action is connected to the transitioning to the next generation of financial services, an aim we have outlined in our five-year business plan. We will work on the business improvement plan with an unwavering resolve based on our deep reflection of the series of failures we've faced.

The improvement plan involves three main pillars. First and foremost, we will enhance our multilayered system failure response capabilities to ensure that failures that severely impact our customers do not reoccur.

This improvement involves preventing system failures and minimizing impacts on customers if they occur. To this end, we have thoroughly re-examined and reviewed our existing measures to prevent recurrence in terms of IT systems, our responses to customers, and crisis management. In conducting the re-examination, we focused on the items described on the right side, incorporating our customer's perspective, feedback from frontline offices, and external knowledge, as well as establishing a process to make our efforts permanent.

To ensure the improvement of our multilayered system failure response capabilities, we will also work to enhance our business management response and reform our corporate culture, as shown in the lower part of this page.

The bottom left section is on our enhanced business management response. Our in- house company system is the foundation of the One MIZUHO strategy. First, however, we must reflect on whether our strategy and the execution and internal controls of entities that support this strategy have been properly balanced.

To ensure the stable operation of systems and business operations that support our strategies, we will gain a multifaceted understanding of the actual frontline conditions and enhance our strategy and resource allocation processes. This action will be performed in a multilayered and specialized manner, by incorporating external knowledge in supervision and execution.

Next, please see the section on reforming corporate culture on the bottom right. Why was there a lack of collaboration and unity in our organization? Were employees encouraged to speak openly and act freely? Additionally, why did our past initiatives not continue and repeatedly fail? We will reflect on these issues with sincerity and with a solid determination to finally make change, building a Mizuho that our customers and society can trust.

To this end, the management team will commit itself to this reform, take specific actions using its initiative, and continue without allowing the lessons learned from our failures to be forgotten over time.

I will now explain more specific details about these three pillars. Firstly, I will talk about the enhancements to our multilayered system failure response capabilities.

In accordance with the basic policy shown at the top of this page, we have thoroughly reexamined and reviewed the measures taken in June last year to prevent a recurrence, fully taking into account the failures since August and suggestions made by the authorities.

In re-examining and reviewing, we took the following three perspectives: customer's perspectives and feedback from frontline offices, utilization of external viewpoints and expert insights, and building of processes to sustain and firmly establish these measures.

The table on the next page shows the main measures to prevent a recurrence. This table is our efforts to prevent system failures.

On the left, for IT systems, we have established a system that is appropriate for the maintenance and operation phase, and we will continuously conduct inspections at a high level in terms of scope and depth for both application and infrastructure platforms.

For applications, we will inspect system behavior and maintenance contents that may lead to significant failures and monitor the status of issues associated with risk. Additionally, we will thoroughly provide the predictive management required for the stable operation of our infrastructure. Actions will include monitoring the aging and failure rates of critical equipment through log inspections, ensuring that backups are working as required, and managing detailed information such as maintenance deadlines and product bug information. We will also enhance our system development management.

Our response to our customers is shown on the right. We will review and improve our customer service based on feedback from customers and frontline offices. For example, we have already made improvements to ATMs. However, we will also check if any remaining system specifications could lead to serious failures, based on feedback from customers and frontline offices or past cases of failure, and formulate countermeasures. We will ensure that we always confirm the maximum possible impact on our customers when implementing a new system release and make suitable preparations.