Chapter 3
Initiatives Pursued by SMBC Banking Units in the Early Years

1. Enhancing our retail consulting and payments & consumer finance businesses

At Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), the Consumer Banking Unit focused on enhancing the consulting and payments & consumer finance businesses while working to ensure low-cost operations in order to increase profits.

The unit promoted the consulting business as a key part of the retail banking business and developed business strategies for the investment management (such as sales of investment trusts) and financing (such as home mortgages) businesses. In the 2000s, the unit responded to the growing trend of deregulation in a timely manner, seizing opportunities made available by a series of deregulation initiatives to enter new businesses, starting with bank sales of individual annuities, followed by insurance sales, securities agent business and testamentary trusts.

SMBC promoted cooperation with its group companies, such as Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company and QUOQ In June 2004, SMBC announced a strategic partnership with Promise, a leading consumer finance company, in order to expand the consumer finance business quickly, and launched a joint venture with Promise and AT-Loan to develop an original business model. The scheme was designed so that each of the three companies would provide loans with one of the three different levels of interest rates in order to serve customers appropriately according to their creditworthiness.