Japan’s biggest brokerage Nomura Holdings has hired a computer-generated influencer to advertise tax-free investing accounts as it tries to attract a younger generation of retail clients.
Imma, a virtual influencer with a pink-colored bob and nearly a million total followers on Instagram and TikTok, has recently begun appearing in Nomura’s advertisements for tax-free accounts that are part of the Nippon Individual Savings Accounts system. The government and brokerage industry have for years been trying to promote NISA, the country’s equivalent of the U.K. ISA plan, as a way to get people to invest in riskier assets rather than hoarding them in savings. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expanding the program from January 2024, and Nomura is launching new tax-exempt products in time for this.
Boosting individual investments is particularly crucial in the coming years as Japan’s baby-boomer generation, which holds a bulk of the country’s household wealth, passes on their assets to a younger generation. For Nomura’s brokerage arm, this is a chance at ensuring funds held by its retail clients, who are mostly over 60 years old, are channeled back toward investments rather than into cash or the state’s coffers via inheritance tax.