The Deposit Insurance Corp. asked the Finance Ministry on Jan. 16 for more personnel so that it can better handle an expanding range of operations needed to clean up failed financial institutions bogged down by bad loans.During a meeting with Finance Minister Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, the heads of the nation's three loan-collection organs -- DIC, the Resolution and Collection Bank and the Housing Loan Administration Corp. -- reported on their operations to clean up after bank failures.Noboru Matsuda, president of DIC, pointed out that his organization, whose basic role is to insure deposits at failed institutions, has since the latter half of last year started to handle a wider range of functions. In one such case, DIC took over the operations of Hanwa Bank, a second-tier regional bank that was ordered to suspend operations in November.Matsuda said his organization needs more people to tackle the greater workload, and Mitsuzuka said the matter would be seriously studied. The nation has been rocked by a wave of financial institutional failures after the burst of the bubble economy left them beneath a mountain of bad loans.The three loan-reclaiming bodies said their operations are going more smoothly than initially expected, and stressed that it is important for malicious borrowers to be brought before the law to show that authorities are serious in tackling the issue.
