October 15, 2024 | Tokyo, Japan

WAIFC Interviews Hiroshi Nakaso, Chairman of FinCity.Tokyo

At WAIFC’s Annual General Meeting in Tokyo, we met with the Chairman of FinCity.Tokyo to discuss the financial center's role in our alliance and explore future opportunities in the industry.

WAIFC’s Annual General Meeting, hosted this year by our esteemed member FinCity.Tokyo, provided a platform for valuable discussions on the future of global finance. During this distinguished event, we had the opportunity to speak with Chairman Hiroshi Nakaso about FinCity.Tokyo's pivotal role within WAIFC and the potential opportunities and challenges facing the global financial industry.

During our interview, we posed several key questions to Chairman Nakaso to gain deeper insights into FinCity.Tokyo’s role in this year’s AGM and its broader impact on the financial industry. Here are the questions and answers we discussed:

1. Which events of WAIFC AGM 2024 is the FinCity.Tokyo interested in?

“The "Women in Finance Project Meeting" is interesting, because a "gender-equal society" is one of the missions promoted by the Japanese Government. The Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office of the Japanese Government promotes so-called "the positive action", which is one of the most effective measures to increase women's participation and provides information, encouragement and cooperation to relevant institutions. Such a promotion aims to achieve the goal of a gender-equal society, with the expectation that the proportion of women in leadership positions in all sectors of society will be at least 30% by 2020.

Also the "WAIFC Art & Financial Centers Event & Young Academic Award Ceremony" is interesting because the Japanese Government, the Japan Chartered Financial Analyst Association, and local firms here in KABUTO-CHO are encouraging young financial professionals and artists.

KABUTO-CHO, one of Japan's leading financial districts, promotes activities linking the arts and finance, such as providing a monthly performance venue for young jazz musicians.”

2. What important initiatives is FinCity.Tokyo in order to promote Tokyo as a financial center?

“As I mentioned in my speech, I think these 4 initiatives are important:

promoting sustainable finance;

creating interoperable Voluntary Carbon Markets with High-Integrity;

enhancing financial Digital Transformation;

advancing the entire investment value chain.

We, FinCity.Tokyo, with the support of the Japan Financial Services Agency and several financial institutions, organize the "Tokyo Sustainable Finance Forum". It is a forum for domestic and international financial institutions and other interested parties on global trends and future prospects in sustainable finance.

It is important that each country takes initiatives to promote Green transformation, such as innovation and the development of policies and mechanisms, and aims for a common goal of net zero under various paths according to their energy situation and other factors.

Our organisation considers the use of fintech to be an important means of contributing to, among other things, improving financial performance.

In light of the above three points, 'advancing the entire investment value chain' is considered essential in Japan in order to bridge the funding gap between the declining birthrate, the ageing population and the retirement of the population in Japan.”

3. What are the opportunities and challenges for the financial industry globally？

“The global economy continues to face the risk of deeper fragmentation against the backdrop of mounting geopolitical tensions. All the more for this reason the global financial industry has a bigger role in supporting the global business community to collaborate in areas where they share common interests such as addressing climate change, maintaining free trade, and promoting investment for sustained growth.

To better serve this purpose, the financial industry must develop new means of providing credit by taking advantage of financial innovation. For example, they could make use of intangible assets such as receivables and intellectual property, which remain thus far under-utilized as collateral.

In this way, I think the global financial industry can play a significant role in mobilizing private capital to fill the huge funding gap required to achieve sustainable development goals.”