Press Conference by SUZUKI Shunichi, Minister of Finance and Minister of State for Financial Services

(Excerpt)

(Tuesday, August 30, 2022, 1:00 pm to 1:19 pm)

[Questions and answers:]

Q.

My question concerns a matter that has been covered in some media. It is being reported that the Financial Services Agency will recommend promoting financial education as a national strategy in its Strategic Priorities to be finalized at the end of August. Could you tell us about the status and background of this recommendation?

A.

The Financial Services Agency will be announcing its Strategic Priorities tomorrow. While I cannot make any specific comments at this time, we basically believe it important that we pursue efforts to improve the public’s financial literacy and ensure that the public has access to financial products that meet with household needs and suitable advice and can use those with peace of mind so that individuals can select appropriate financial products and services that suit their life plans and help them steadily build up financial assets.
To this end, we think that it is necessary to provide opportunities of financial and economic education, including education on asset building, for a wide range of generation including students and working adults , and to further encourage financial institutions to conduct customer-centric business operations.

Q.

Last week on the 24th, August, the FSA released its video interview with Mr. Hiroyuki Nishimura, the founder of “2channel”, and there has been growing concerns on the Internet that appointing him in such video may have been inappropriate because he has yet to pay the court-assessed penalties he owes after losing a civil lawsuit. Could we hear your views on this matter? In addition, could you also let us know what the aim was in appointing Mr. Hiroyuki and what steps you plan to take in future in response to this criticism, such as deleting the video?

A.

The FSA has been making various efforts to raise public awareness of the need for steady asset building and financial literacy, including the release of interview videos.
As part of these efforts, we asked Mr. Hiroyuki, a well-known and popular figure among young people, to appear in a video discussion, for which he was not paid any compensation.
We are aware that there has been some criticism about the video discussion with Mr. Hiroyuki in relation to his non-payment of penalties in the past. However, since that is a matter related to a civil lawsuit that has nothing to do with our PR activities, we do not consider this to be an immediate problem. Accordingly, we have no plans to delete the interview video.
In general, we believe it important for the FSA to improve its public relations activities not only by enhancing their effectiveness but also by taking into consideration the various opinions that we receive to make necessary improvements. We will keep these approaches in mind as we work tirelessly to better our public relations activities.

Q.

On this same matter, the video has received a considerable number of views since being released on YouTube, helping to publicize NISA to a wide-ranging audience, and I would like to ask if you personally feel that the right person was selected for this video.

A.

I count on my staff for such matters.