Social Contribution（Financial Literacy Education）

Promotion of Financial Literacy Education

SMBC 金融経済教育

SMBC Group seeks to create a society where everyone can live safely, equipped with an accurate knowledge of money, by providing financial literacy education for all ages as a group-wide program.


Financial literacy develops an independent-minded stance towards a more valuable life and the creation of a better society. This is because financial literacy helps people understand about money and its various function, think deeply about their own life and society and sophisticate their ways and values of living.

Through the provision of financial literacy education, we are helping people gain skills to “become self-reliant” and “be involved in the society”, usually obtained by working, thinking about cash planning and using money. We receive feedbacks like “I want to live as a responsible adult” and “I recognized that I need early preparation to realize my life plan” from the students of our program.

We set a KPI to provide our financial literacy program to 1.5 million people from FY2020 to FY 2029 (accumulative). Also, in FY2020, we conducted a social impact assessment to visualize our social impact of the “Promise Financial and Economic Education Seminar”, a program at the core of SMBC Group's social contribution activities.



Please refer to the link below for our progress of providing financial literacy education.


Outreach Classes Learning Materials Sponsorship & Events Information Contents Others※
Elementary School Students ● ● ● ● ●
Junior High School Students ● ●
High School Students ● ● ● ●
College Students ● ● ● ●
Working Adults ● ● ● ●

※Company Tours, Work Experience, Industry-Academia Collaboration, etc



Also, with the support of Social Value Japan, we conducted a social impact assessment of our financial literacy education for the first time as a Japanese financial institution. We will utilize this assessment to see if we are creating social impacts from an objective perspective, such as changes in awareness and actions of audiences concerning money, and improve our programs.

From the assessment in FY2020, we verified the expected outcome of our logic model we formed for the financial literacy education program, and we have confirmed that by attending our seminars, improvement in financial literacy of attendees have been seen.

FY2020 Social Impact Assessment Report

FY2021 Social Impact Assessment Report

FY2022 Social Impact Assessment Report

Financial and Economic Education

SMBC Group provides various types of financial literacy programs by several group companies as below. These programs are held both face to face and through online channels, in light of the convenience of attendees and the situation regarding COVID-19.

Please refer to the following record of the number of participants in our Financial and Economic Education Seminars:
●In 2020: 131,551 participants
●In 2021: 166,133 participants
●In 2022: 227,782 participants

Outreach Classes

SMBC: Financial and Economic Education (Japanese only) 

SMBC Nikko: Financial and Economic Education 

SMCC：Financial Education (Japanese only) 

SMBCCF: The Realization of a Lively Society and a Happy and Healthy Lifestyle for People (Japanese only) 

For Elementary School Students

Initiatives for Elementary School Students

Hosting "Financial and Economic Education Seminars for Children"

Considering that elementary school students are at a stage where they gradually come to understand the importance and role of money, and through various experiences, form the basis of their ability to live in society in the future, we teach classes using original textbooks and experiential classes utilizing card games, targeting senior students.
In addition, we host programs to convey the importance of "using money in a balanced manner" and "using it in a planned way".

For Junior High School and High School Students

Initiatives for Junior High and High School Students

Hosting Financial and Economic Education Seminars Tailored to School Needs

We host financial and economic education seminars with a focus on "life planning and household budget management," "loans and credit," and "financial troubles," so that students who will carry the future and people in the community can acquire correct knowledge about money and make appropriate judgments. Additionally, we offer classes tailored to the needs of each generation and the schools, covering the characteristics and mechanisms of various non-cash payment methods such as credit cards, debit cards, and prepaid cards, as well as the importance of money management in preparation for the cashless society.


SMBC Consumer Finance

For College Students and Working Adults

Initiatives for University Students

Hosting Financial and Economic Education Seminars on "Asset Management" and "Inheritance"

To deepen the understanding and knowledge of economics, finance, and asset formation for a wide range of generations up to adults, our employees visit educational sites and various facilities to conduct outreach classes. For instance, we roll out seminars on various themes tailored to the concerns and needs of our customers, such as "anxiety about the future" and "their own inheritance". Specifically, we explain how we can extend the "asset lifespan" needed for future nursing care, introduce specific investment methods in preparation for future stock price movements, and explain benefits of regular investment for beginners.


Learning Materials

Publication of "The Secrets of Banks"

In May 2007, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation collaborated with Gakken Co., Ltd. (at that time) to publish "The Secrets of Banks" from the "Easy-to-Understand Manga Series". The book was donated to approximately 23,000 elementary schools nationwide and about 3,000 public libraries. "The Secrets of Banks" explains the social role of banks and the history of banking, focusing on the three major banking operations, "deposits, loans, and foreign exchange," in an easy-to-understand manner using manga.


Providing Textbooks for Financial Literacy Certification

"Finance for Living and the Future"
SMBC Consumer Finance has cooperatively developed a digital textbook, "Handbook of Money and Living," which enables you to acquire the ability to make judgments about money, in planning cooperation with the "Financial Literacy Certification" founded by the General Incorporated Association for Financial and Fiscal Studies. This textbook incorporates the knowledge and know-how cultivated in our seminars on life planning, household budget management, and prevention of financial troubles, which we have been hosting since 2011. It is a teaching material where practical financial economics can be learned, and it is produced with reference to the curriculum guidelines for high schools.


Digital Textbook of Financial Literay Test/SMBC Consumer Finance (promise-plaza.com) 
Providing Textbooks for Financial Literacy Certification
Tools Related to Finance and Economics Education

"Asset Monster"
SMBC Nikko Securities created an original card game and textbook in collaboration with the Financial Intelligence Promotion Association.
A set of original texts with manga is a teaching material that allows you to learn about the structure and role of the economy and finance, and different types of financial assets and their characteristics in a fun way.


Asset Monster
"Hello! Money" Pocket Money Book App for Children

SMCC has released the "Hello! Money" allowance management learning tool, a free app for parents and children for financial literacy education. It helps children to learn the basics of personal finance through the management of their own allowances from an early age. It also provides parents and their children the opportunity to learn together the basics of money-spending, saving and increasing-in a fun way in order to help foster financial literacy in young people.


SMCC: "Hello! Money" allowance management learning app for parents and children for financial education (Japanese only) 
  • Hello! Money Financial Education App
  • Hello! Money Financial Education App

Sponsorship & Events

Support for Finance Seminars, etc,
Support for KidZania Tokyo and KidZania Koshien

As an official sponsor of KidZania Tokyo and KidZania Koshien, SMBC Group offers a vocational experience of banking for children. At KidZania Tokyo (in Koto Ward, Tokyo), SMBC has been a sponsor of the company since the park's completion in October 2006, and operates a bank branch that issues the Kidzania currency, "kidZos." At the KidZania Koshien branch, which opened in March 2008, in addition to issuing the currency, the bank also runs a program that lets children experience the jobs of bank employees in a fun and interesting way.

For further details, please refer to the following link.


KidZania (Japanese only) 

Support for KidZania Tokyo and KidZania Koshien
SMBC Group Tankentai

SMBC Group holds the SMBC group Tankentai event in which children and families of employees visit their workplaces and learn about the finance business through experience. The events in fiscal 2019 were held at the Tokyo and Osaka head offices of the SMBC and the head office of SMBC Nikko Securities (Shinmaru Building), with the participation of 215 people from 84 teams in Group companies. During the guided visit at the bank offices, visitors were brought to a bank vault normally unseen by customers and experienced the weight of 100 million yen in real bills, after attending lessons on the finance business and how to count paper money. The guided visit at SMBC Nikko Securities included an encounter with the Paralympic sport of blind soccer and workplace visits. Employees' families were able to better understand what their work entails by actually experiencing the workplace.


SMBC Group Tankentai

SMBC: Natsuyasumi Kodomo Ginko Tankentai Bank Tour Program (Japanese only) 
Nikko Family Exciting Experience Day

SMBC Nikko Securities has held the "Nikko Family Exciting Experience Day," a special hands-on social learning program, during children's summer break at its nationwide branches since 2006.
For the program, elementary school students and their families visit the company's branches and learn about the economy, money flows, the social role of financial institutions and more in a fun and exciting way through quizzes, hands-on experiments using information terminals and talks by employees.

Information Contents

Others

Company Tours

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation has been promoting activities that contribute to local communities, which are planned by our nationwide business locations. Each location conducts various activities such as organizing bank tours, cleaning up the areas around the branches and outdoors, and participating in local events. In addition, we host company tours for junior high and high school students, where they can learn about banking operations and professions through visits to our sales floors and market sales department's dealing rooms.
SMBC Nikko Securities accepts company tours from students and the general public to learn and deepen their knowledge about economics and finance. Through lectures within the program and visits to our main and branch offices, we help participants better understand the relationship between our lives and money, the roles and workings of financial institutions, and various knowledge about financial transactions. This initiative is also carried out as part of career education.

Collaborating with Educational Institutions (Creating Newly Added Value by Cultivating Data Scientists and the Use and Application of Data)

SMBC Trust Bank, along with the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, concluded an agreement with Shiga University in September 2017 for collaboration and cooperation in education and research fields related to data science. SMBC is also cultivating human resources with expertise and skills in data science by jointly establishing Japan's first data science department with Shiga University in April 2017, dispatching lecturers to the university and accepting student internships. The Group is also undertaking initiatives to create newly added value by the use and application of data collected through shared research in business fields.


「ファイナンス・パーク」への協力
Academic-industrial alliance with Kyoto University (Informatics Business Lecture Program)

In June 2018, Japan Research Institute, together with Kyoto University and 5 partner companies, established the Informatics Business Lecture Program. Partner companies provide materials on the importance of IT in business industries, issues and case studies in the corporate management and practices. By learning the importance of IT in the society and business world, we are working on nurturing students with practical IT literacy. By this program providing IT education which is vital to understand finance, we are contributing to improve financial literacy.


Informatics Business Lecture Program (Japanese only) 
Academic-industrial alliance with Kobe University (Industry, Academia, Government and Region Collaboration Digital Personnel Training Lab)

Japan Research Institute has offered courses on financial business and IT to Kobe University since 2016. In 2019, we joined the Industry, Academia, Government and Region Collaboration Digital Personnel Training Lab to develop and implement full-scale educational programs for digital personnel training. We have established a new workshop style lecture on the theme in IT and information systems engineering in the financial business, providing a place to learn from practice teachers.


Kobe University Center for Mathematical and Data Sciences (Japanese only)