4. Taking part in the digital revolution

In the 2010s, a new breed of financial services based on information technology—known as financial technology (fintech)—arose, driven by the rapid progress of the digital revolution. SMFG saw in this trend a significant opportunity to create new businesses and improve convenience and productivity. The company began from the initial stage of the digital revolution to carry out various programs to develop digital technology-enabled new businesses by using open innovation platforms as well as to digitize its financial operations.

In October 2015, each of SMFG and SMBC set up an IT Innovation Department to serve as SMBC Group’s innovation hubs. Then, in September 2017, the Group launched an open innovation center named hoops link Tokyo in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, for the purpose of facilitating innovative activities by utilizing external technologies and ideas.

Meanwhile, the Group invested substantially in digital platform development. Its major use was for providing biometric authentication (Polarify), electronic contract (SMBC CLOUDSIGN), and other digital service options, while offering unconventional services at the same time. Also, the corporate digital platform PlariTown was rolled out in August 2020, for the purpose of supporting digital transformation (DX) of mid-tier corporate and small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers.

In April 2016, noting the need to raise the digital literacy of the entire Group workforce in order to deal with issues related to digitization-driven business model transformation, SMFG, SMBC and Japan Research Institute jointly formed SMFG IT University, an in-house IT learning & training institution, which was relaunched in April 2019 as the Digital University.