Values like integrity, customer focus, team work and Accountability make Shinsei Bank a Striking Global Success
December 14, 2008
| The Financial Express
Shinsei Bank, a globally leading world-class organisation, indeed epitomises a renaissance of a spectacular success from the collapse of LTBC (Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan). My admiration for Shinsei Bank and Masamoto Yashiro, Chairman, Shinsei goes deeper than can be expressed.
What makes Shinsei Bank truly remarkable is its incredible rise from the ashes of its former entity Long Term Credit Bank of Japan after the latter was nationalised in 1998. Reborn as Shinsei in the year 2000, the bank was transformed from a failed wholesale bank into a vibrant, healthy retail bank under the able guidance of Yashiro-san. Since then Shinsei has been a pioneer in bringing out new products/ services and new levels of customer satisfaction through cutting edge technology usage.
Today, Shinsei is a leading diversified Japanese financial institution with total assets of ¥11.5 trillion ($115 billion) on a consolidated basis as of March 2008. Providing a full range of financial products and services to both institutional and individual customers, it has been recognised amongst the best banks in Japan.
Yashiro is a leader who brought in world's best practices in HR and IT, apart from branding and customer service. The IT practices adopted by Shinsei have become a global benchmark, which has been documented as a case study at Harvard Business School, and was published in Harvard Business Review.
A number of books have been published about this extremely successful revival of a failed bank in Japanese and English. In fact, a novel has also been written in Japanese on the subject. Shinsei is able to offer services to Japanese retail banking customers that were unimaginable in Japan earlier, at the prices at which they were offered.
With an extremely high focus on customers, Shinsei makes sure every single complaint is analysed very carefully to identify the root causes, which are then addressed so that the same mistake does not happen again.
Yashiro built a culture where business development is driven by the needs of customers. Shinsei Bank ensures that every employee grows through learning something new everyday.
Its vision statement explains in few lines the philosophy that the bank believes in — "We are Japan's pre-eminent financial services firm, delivering trusted solutions to grow sustainable value with our customers, our employees and our shareholders."
The extremely high level of energy, the openness of mind to new ideas, long term vision, and desire to do something for his country are some of the qualities of Mr Yashiro that are highly admirable. Values like integrity, customer focus, teamwork and accountability are values that I admire in him. They are the fundamental building blocks of any great institution and that is the reason why Shinsei is what it is a striking success.
The writer is CEO of Nucleus Software Vishnu R Dusad