- Integrated Report 2024
- Message from the CEO
- Message from the COO
- Message from the CFO - financial strategy
- Roundtable Discussion among Outside Directors
- Our Vision for a 2030
- New Medium-term Management Plan
- Global Business: A Decade of Tackling Challenges
- The Transformation of Saison Fundex Corporation
- CSDX Strategy
- Human Resource Strategy・Human Resource
The Cherished Values of Credit Saison
Message from the CEO
How to survive in a multipolarizing world
The future outlook of the international climate around us is becoming increasingly unclear. Struggles for supremacy are intensifying worldwide. Geopolitical risks, such as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Palestinian situation, are reaching new heights. There has also been a prominent rise in the Global South, which includes India. Our world is multipolarizing.
When thinking about the Group’s management, we must always keep this international situation in mind. India has become the world’s most populous country, and there is no doubt that it will gain an even greater presence in the global economy. We are steadily expanding our own global business, primarily focused on Kisetsu Saison Finance (India) Pvt. Ltd. (hereafter, Credit Saison India), which we established in India in 2018. For Japanese companies to maintain their presence in this increasingly multipolarized world, they must become more well-versed in the histories of the countries and regions in which they do business. They must create new business models aligned with local issues and expectations.
Human resource assignments based on skills and performance, not seniority
Until now, when Japanese companies expanded globally, the most common governanceapproach was to hold over half of the capital of a local company, sending a president from Japan to helm it and putting it under the head office’s chain of command. In this era of multipolarization, it is important to live up to the hopes of the countries in which one does business, contributing to the development of the local economy. Control based on capital contribution ratios is not essential. Credit Saison India has expanded to almost 1,200 employees* and is growing rapidly, primarily through the lending business aimed at underserved individuals without bank accounts. There is not a single Japanese person on its executive team. In Vietnam, we established HD SAISON Finance Co., Ltd. in 2015, with a local financial institution as the majority equity holder. It has 7,500 outstanding local employees* and it, as well, has no employees dispatched from Japan.
The key local members that play active roles in these global Group companies, which also include companies in Brazil and Mexico, are invited to global summits held in our headoffice in Tokyo. These global summits provide them with opportunities to network not only with employees of the head office but also those of the Group as a whole. This year, roughly 150 global personnel assembled in Tokyo. Employees from India, a country that is making energetic advances, demonstrated a passion and vigor in the global summit that tremendously stimulated Japanese employees.
When thinking about global governance, the most important thing is to decide who to put in charge—selecting a local CEO and the rest of the executive team. No matter what the era, it is always people who change companies. We do not look at seniority when hiring or promoting human resources. Looking at the members of our own Board of Directors, you will see that the only inside director who is a dyed-in-the-wool Credit Saison member is COO Mizuno. Our outside directors are also a unique group, with diverse areas of expertise. In this constantly changing world, having a Board of Directors that actively takes on new management challenges contributes to a higher level of governance.
* As of June 30, 2024
Human resources develop through their actual experiences and mindsets
While some of our human resources continued to pursue and achieve growth even after the collapse of the economic bubble in the early 1990s, providing them with their own experiences of success, many of our junior employees, hired in 2000 or beyond, lack these successful experiences. While there are also negative sides to successful experiences that can impede innovation, if personnel who have not experienced success become executives in the future, there are concerns that they will be unable to bear down when they need to, weakening our company. I believe that it is important to have employees keep taking on new challenges and trying their hand at new work. Hard training, such as sending people into environments in which there is no one to rely on other than themselves, also leads to growth. When you hear “success story,” the first thing that comes to mind is someone valiantly standing up to every kind of difficulty without ever losing heart, keeping the same goals, and never giving up, because success lies ahead. However, I think that’s a mentality that Japan needed long ago, when it was developing its secondary industries. In the future, though, what I think we will need is the power to quit when we have hit a dead end. By quitting, we can free up time and energy to try something new. We need the courage and the mindset to decide for ourselves how to use this time and energy. Innovation comes from rejecting the status quo.
The shape of organizations and personnel in the age of transformation
We have entered an era in which machines can take care of repetitive rote work. The rise of generative AI has further accelerated this shift. We are entering a time in which there is not even a need to have the courage to quit, because there is no need to start. What role should humans play in a time like this? I believe that our desire for knowledge springing from our curiosity, together with our ability to become absorbed in what we do, is the wellspring of new innovation, and in these areas, machines cannot replace people.
I have developed a formula for this “power to be absorbed,” which is that one’s ability is equal to the square of the time spent making concentrated efforts. When you do work because you are curious and want to try your hand at it, “working” naturally becomes “learning,” and, I believe, almost “playing.”
Of course, this is all predicated on the working environment being one that accepts the free and wide-ranging curiosity and values of each individual. Innovative organizations have the deep-rooted habit of creatively destroying, for example, products, services, and work styles. This creative destruction arises from interactions with people with diverse values and ways of thinking.
Each and every human resource must think for themselves about what to do with the time that has been equally apportioned to them and act on their own, acting on their own free will, in order to grow. Even if products, services, and work styles are changed through creative destruction, the ideals of our organization will always be to treat the diverse values of each person equitably and support employees’ desire to grow. In the years to come, Credit Saison wants to remain the kind of company in which each human resource can live up to their full potential, and that it will enrich the lives of employees, not only spiritually, but also economically.
