— Credit Saison Group's goal

The environment surrounding us has dramatically changed in the last few years as you can see the transition to the new normal created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, the soaring prices of goods and other facts. We need to actively work to solve social issues to ensure that we will always be needed by society, even in an era of increasing uncertainty  about the future. Solving social issues and establishing a sustainable society go hand in hand with our growth. Based on this understanding, our expertise, management resources and the abilities of every employee will be utilized in the Credit Saison Group's concerted efforts to promote sustainability initiatives.

— Initiatives encouraging sustainability

In August 2021, we established the Sustainability Promotion Committee as an advisory body to the Representative Director regarding sustainability activities. The committee consists of the Representative, Executive President and COO and is composed of executive officers, outside directors and others who are in charge of many different divisions internally. The entire Credit Saison Group is working together to solve social and environmental issues. Our existing sustainability initiatives have been reorganized and our Materialities for sustainability and initiatives were defined in September 2022. The initiatives will be reviewed in accordance with the changes in our management environment and we will push forward with business activities in light of these material issues.

— Environmental initiatives

Worldwide, the severity of climate change and other global environment issues is increasing.
We expressed our support of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations in May 2022 and are involved in the TCFD consortium, a discussion forum for the companies and financial institutions supporting the recommendations. Setting out our GHG emissions reduction targets, we disclose information in line with the TCFD recommendations. The Credit Saison Group as a whole is pushing forward with these initiatives based on our understanding that the risks and opportunities associated with climate change significantly impact our business strategies.

— Social initiatives

Since our founding, we have encouraged diversity, equity and inclusion, believing that our most important asset for sustainable growth is people. We are also committed to health management to enable employees to continue working with good mental and physical health. The company will continue to provide support to ensure that the many different efforts of each employee are appreciated, the employees are able to feel secure knowing that failures are allowed and that every employee is able to achieve maximum performance.

To facilitate global financial inclusion in pursuit of a borderless, sustainable world, our global businesses are expanding mainly into Southeast Asia and India and we offer digitalized and localized financial services to people (underserved people) and small businesses that are unable to receive sufficient or adequate financial services. In April 2022, an Indian business model was horizontally expanded and we advanced into Brazil and Mexico, the first Latin American areas we operate in. Going forward, we will enable the financial inclusion of local peoples in cooperation with local companies in many different countries through impact investment.

—  Governance initiatives

To achieve sustainable improvement of corporate value, we position the enhancement of corporate governance as a key management initiative. To this end, we are improving internal control systems, strengthening risk management systems, ensuring thorough compliance. Since March 2020, we have reviewed the director composition of our Board of Directors and introduced our executive officer system, to strengthen our corporate governance system through separation between operational execution and management supervision. At the same time, developed an efficient business execution system to exercise more appropriate management supervision functions. We will continue to discuss how our management mechanisms should work in ways that are best suited to us in consideration of global corporate governance trends and our basic policy on internal control systems.