Providing Solutions
Challenge for Society
Under our Purpose of “Trust for a flourishing future,” we are promoting initiatives to achieve the balanced creation of both social value and economic value. With wide-ranging functions such as banking, asset management, and real estate, the Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group itself will play a leading role in investing capital in areas that create new markets and opportunities to expand the economy and markets, and attract Japanese investors’ funds, thereby creating a virtuous circulation of funds, assets, and capital.

Initiatives for Positive Impact
Japan’s long-standing financial challenges have been that abundant personal financial assets and corporate retained earnings have not flowed into investment or consumption, but have remained stagnant in the form of cash and bank deposits. To break away from this stagnation, we all need to make a move together, and we now have a great opportunity in the form of creating a decarbonized society.
Creating a decarbonized society will require huge amounts of money, and the public sector alone will not be able to cover the costs. Therefore, private funds are expected to be used, and the key here is the circulation of funds. As a specialized trust bank, it is part of our mission to connect the capital needs of industry with the management needs of investors to create a virtuous circulation of funds.
The roles of financial institutions and institutional investors expected by companies are changing, and they must no longer focus solely on financial information when supplying funds, but must also take responsibility for creating social value, or generating impact, by providing funds. This is what is attracting international attention as impact finance, which involves investing funds at key points along the value chain where the best impact can be achieved, and monitoring the impact of the investment.
The SuMi TRUST Group is tackling various impact businesses as stated below.
Corporate finance (March 2019) |
SuMi TRUST Bank provided positive impact finance to Fuji Oil Group headquarters as a loan for operating companies with unspecified use of funds.
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Equity investment (October 2019) |
Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management developed a Japanese equity impact fund and launched it in 2020.
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Advisory services for real asset investments (March 2021) |
SuMi TRUST Bank began providing impact analysis services for ships to Anchor Ship Partners Co., Ltd.
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Advisory services for venture capital (April 2021) |
SuMi TRUST Bank began providing science-based impact analysis services for VC portfolio companies managed by Real Tech Holdings Co., Ltd.
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Collaboration and knowledge sharing with academia (November 2021) |
The project “Co-creation center for recycling-oriented society based on renewable polysaccharide plant-derived plastics” led by Kanazawa University, in which SuMi TRUST Bank began participating from the viewpoint of introducing impact finance in the future, was selected for JST’s “COI-NEXT (Co-creation area full-scale type)” program, which supports the creation of places for co-creation.
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Equity investment (April 2022) |
SuMi TRUST Bank began full-scale initiatives to leverage the capital surplus created by the sale of strategic shareholdings to make impact equity investments totaling ¥500 billion using internal funds by FY2030. By using internal funds for investment, SuMi TRUST Bank aims to attract equity investment from other institutional investors, with a goal of providing a total of ¥2 trillion in equity funding by FY2030, including both internal funds and investor funds.
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Provision of services to local governments (July 2022) |
SuMi TRUST Bank conducted an impact evaluation of Odawara City’s renewable energy local production for local consumption project on the local community and published a report on the city’s website (in collaboration with The Bank of Yokohama and Hamagin Research Institute), encouraging behavioral changes among local residents and businesses.
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Collaboration with regional financial institutions (November 2022) |
The scheme of SuMi TRUST Bank conducting impact evaluations, and our multiple financing and regional financial institutions use the evaluations to provide loans, was selected as a model case study for the Ministry of the Environment’s Green Finance Model Case Creation Project” in FY2022. This enables the setting, measurement, and management of long-term impact targets on a company-by-company basis, without being restricted to individual loans or loan periods. |
Joint projects with companies (November 2022) |
SuMi TRUST Bank and Amita Holdings Co., Ltd. agreed to jointly conduct an impact evaluation of MEGURU STATION®, a mutual aid and community-based resource recovery station, in order to accelerate its initiatives.
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