Toho Bank Group and Nomura conclude comprehensive financial instruments intermediary agreement

Norbert Gehrke
Tokyo FinTech
Published in
4 min readJul 28, 2024

The Toho Bank and its wholly owned subsidiary, Toho Securities, and Nomura Securities, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nomura Holdings, have concluded a definitive agreement for a comprehensive business alliance in financial instruments intermediary services as previously announced on August 30, 2023.

The commencement of the Alliance is subject to the receipt of necessary approvals from relevant authorities, approvals from the prescribed institutions of the three companies, and the execution of other agreements necessary for the Alliance, and the implementation will proceed upon successful conclusion of those items.

Content of the Alliance

As announced at the time of the basic agreement, Nomura Securities will succeed to the customer accounts and rights and obligations related to a portion of the registered financial institution business, such as the over-the-counter sales of public bonds and investment trusts by Toho Bank, and the customer accounts of Toho Securities through a company split (absorption-type company split).

Nomura Securities will, in addition to the financial instruments intermediary services related to the customer accounts for which handling has already been entrusted by Toho Bank under the Financial Instruments Intermediary Service Agreement concluded between Nomura Securities and Toho Bank, the customer accounts succeeded from Toho Bank and Toho Securities, and the customer accounts (excluding some accounts) of Nomura Securities’ Fukushima Branch and Koriyama Branch (including Iwaki Sales Office), entrust Toho Bank with the financial instruments intermediary services related to the acquisition of new customers mainly in Fukushima Prefecture and the financial instruments intermediary accounts opened by the new customers with Nomura Securities.

In conjunction with the above, Nomura Securities will dispatch its employees to Toho Bank to engage in financial instruments intermediary services together with Toho Bank’s employees, and will support their sales activities by providing specialized know-how and abundant information.

Through this Alliance, Toho Bank will be responsible for soliciting, selling, and providing after-sales services for customers’ asset management, etc., mainly in Fukushima Prefecture, while Nomura Securities will be responsible for account management. Both companies will cooperate to provide a variety of products, services, consulting functions, etc.

In addition, Nomura Securities’ Fukushima Branch and Koriyama Branch plan to continue their business with a portion of corporate customers, including financial institutions and listed companies, etc., after changing their names and roles.

New Sales Structure

Toho Bank will establish a new “Asset Consulting Department” within Toho Bank by integrating the asset management departments of Toho Bank, Toho Securities, and Nomura Securities’ Fukushima Branch and Koriyama Branch, and will manage the post-alliance business operations mainly through this organization.

The Asset Consulting Department will establish business locations in Fukushima, Koriyama, Shirakawa, Aizu, Haranomachi, and Iwaki, and will work in collaboration with each of Toho Bank’s branches to provide high-value-added comprehensive financial services. By leveraging the strengths of both the Toho Bank Group and Nomura Securities to generate synergistic effects, and by enhancing face-to-face consulting and expanding digital non-face-to-face services, we aim to contribute to “creating an affluent life for each and every customer.”

Through these initiatives, we aim to expand the total assets under custody of both companies in this financial instruments intermediary business to 1 trillion yen.

Future Schedule

Toho Bank and Nomura Securities, and Toho Securities and Nomura Securities have concluded the Absorption-Type Company Split Agreements related to this Alliance.

Information on specific procedures, etc. will be sent out from August 2024. Customers will be required to submit documents.

Scheduled migration date to Nomura Securities’ Financial Instruments Intermediary Accounts:

  • Customer Accounts of Nomura Securities’ Fukushima Branch and Koriyama Branch: January 2025
  • Customer Accounts of Toho Securities: July 2025
  • Securities Customer Accounts of Toho Bank: October 2025

Please follow us to read more about Finance & FinTech in Japan, like hundreds of readers do every day. We invite you to also register for our short weekly digest, the “Japan FinTech Observer”, on Medium or on LinkedIn. Our global Finance & FinTech Podcast, “eXponential Finance” is also available through its own LinkedIn newsletter, or via our Podcast Page.

Should you live in Tokyo, or just pass through, please also join our meetup. In any case, our YouTube channel and LinkedIn page are there for you as well.

--

--

Norbert Gehrke
Tokyo FinTech

Passionate about strategy & innovation across Asia. At home in Japan. Connector of people & ideas.