Japan Post to be inspected as investment trust vendor
The Financial Services Agency is considering introducing as early as next fiscal year a system that will enable the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission to inspect Japan Post’s investment trust operations, officials at the financial watchdog said Tuesday.
The FSA has signaled its intention to allow post offices to sell investment trusts — financial products similar to mutual funds –but to apply the same inspection and regulatory measures to post offices as those applied to private financial institutions, they said.
The FSA is presently negotiating with the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, the supervising ministry of Japan Post operations, on the matter of allowing post offices to sell investment trusts.
The FSA plans to submit a bill to revise the Securities and Exchanges Law to the Diet this autumn so as to implement the plan in the latter half of 2005, they said.
The agency wants to create the system for inspecting post offices by the end of fiscal 2005, they said.
The agency is prepared to treat Japan Post as a registered institution under the Securities and Exchanges Law like banks, life insurance companies and other financial institutions handling investment trusts, the officials said.
In so doing, the SESC would be able to inspect Japan Post and post offices with sizable sales of investment trusts across the country.
